Don’t try to control your successor - Baako tells Sophia Akuffo

Editor-in-Chief of the New Crusading Guide Newspaper Abdul Malik Kweku Baako has cautioned the immediate past Chief Justice, Her Ladyship Justice Sophia Akuffo not to try and teleguide her successor.

Justice Sophia Akuffo addressing a valedictory ceremony held in her honour at the Supreme Court on Thursday cautioned would-be law students, law students and practising lawyers who are entertaining thoughts that the incoming Chief Justice, Justice Anin Yeboah, will relax standards, to manage their expectations because her potential successor is more of a person who insists on things unyieldingly than she has been.

She said if people are expecting the standards to be lowered during the time of Justice Anin Yeboah, they have to rethink that position.

“We need to be very serious about standards if we don’t want to end up with lawyers who do more harm than good. Even though we don’t have the same tenets as the medical profession where it says “first do no harm,” I think we can do with adopting that tenet. I have been listening to the radio and people have been saying things like when the new Chief Justice comes…. They don’t know! I think he is even more of a stickler than I am,” Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo said.

But Abdul Malik Kweku Baako speaking on Joy FM’s News File show on Saturday monitored by Kasapapafmonline.com described the comment by the former Leader of Bench as totally needless and unwarranted.

“…The Law School reforms, I don’t think her position was progressive, too conservative and I’m disappointed that she decided to do a preemptive or if you like a premature strike. To tell us…I thought she should have left that alone and let Justice Anin-Yeboah come and deal with the situation and face the forces."

"Because I think that particular issue her stance was too conservative, too rigid. I saw quote and unquote a stubborn cat in her and that ought not to happen. So she shouldn’t more or less this is dangerous to say, teleguide her successor to go in the same direction. I thought that was needless and unwarranted. I didn’t get it as a joke.”