When Mahama 'missed a call' from Akufo-Addo

It was a subtle message to the former President, John Dramani Mahama, from his successor, incumbent President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

The message was simple: the former President should understand that the judiciary operates based on the Rule of Law and not on political considerations.

His comments

Read full articlecame following comments of John Dramani Mahama during a forum held for lawyers of the National Democratic Congress on August 28.

The former president suggested that the judiciary has a 'broken image under the current leadership of the Chief Justice' and that it will take a new Chief Justice to restore the public trust in the legal institution.

"There is therefore an urgent need for the Ghanaian judiciary to work to win the trust and confidence of the citizenry and erase the widely held perception of hostility and political bias in legal proceedings at the highest courts of the land.

"Unfortunately, we have no hope that the current leadership of our judiciary can lead such a process of change. We can only hope that a new Chief Justice will lead a process to repair the broken image that our judiciary has acquired over the last few years," Mahama submitted.

Mahama's comments generated a lot of discourse and reactions, with the latest being from the President and the Attorney General's camp.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo reacted to these suggestions while addressing guests at the 2022 Annual Bar Conference on Monday, September 12, 2022.

According to him, persons who instigate dislike and hatred for the judicial system should be discouraged. According to him, some of these persons went for intervention from the Supreme Court to win a court case but had their case dismissed in a unanimous decision by a 7-member panel.

It will be recalled that Former President John Dramani Mahama and the NDC petitioned the court following the 2020 elections, where he lost to Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who polled 51.3%.


The Supreme Court judges in a unanimous decision quashed the petition citing lack of merit.

President Akufo-Addo subtly raising this incident in reaction to Mr. Mahama’s comments said,

“Just as government continues to implement policies to chart a path to advance the rule of law and thereby re-enforce the confidence in the people and shore up our nation as a country governed by rule of law. There are some that have made it their political agenda to disarray systematically the image of the judiciary for selfish parochial partisan reasons.

“These are the plaintiffs who go to court, indeed the highest court of the land, provide the skimpiest of evidence to back their claims and yet insist that their claims be upheld despite the elementary violation of the ancient common law rules for the discharge of the burden of proof that such a resort will entail.

“It is no wonder that their claims were unanimously dismissed 7-0 by the apex court. The result of this case is in stark contrast to the result in 2013 when the unsuccessful plaintiffs managed to persuade four out of a nine-member court to fight for them and yet the earlier plaintiffs chose not to wage a political war against the court,” he added.

On his part, Godfred Dame said that Mr. Mahama’s utterances were unwarranted, and deplorable, particularly having come from a man he described as having occupied the highest office of the land.

He further noted that the ex-president’s attacks were unjustified considering the court is available to administer justice according to the law and not a – in his words; “mercy chamber to serve justice based on sympathy or affection”.

Mr. Dame further accused Mr. Mahama of having launched the said attacks owing to the unanimous dismissal of the Election Petition by the Supreme Court in 2020 following the general elections in which he lost to the current Nana Addo Dankwa-led government.

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