CJ’s position on school of law dangerous – OB Amoah

A deputy Local Government Minister, OB Amoah has warned that the status quo where a huge number of people are denied admission into the Ghana School of Law could have serious repercussions for the country.

Weighing into a far-reaching demand by many that the only law school in Ghana should be scraped, he decried the circumstance where leeway has been given to several institutions to give theoretical training to thousands, but access to practical training has extremely been narrowed.

Currently, 14 institutions have been accredited to offer Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree but only one school – Ghana School of Law – run by the General Legal Council is permitted to train professional lawyers.

Aside the backlog of persons seeking to gain admission into the professional school, about 2000 others have completed their LLB but only 400 would be admitted into Ghana School of Law this year.

This necessitated calls for a better way of getting more people enrolled and trained to practice law in the country.

But Chief Justice-designate Sophia Akuffo told the 26-member Appointments Committee of Parliament Friday she has no plans of scrapping the school.

“The Ghana School of Law is a professional training facility and that is where the theories learnt in classroom are supposed to be taught from a more practical point of view and that is how it has been,” she said.

However, OB Amoah contributing to a discussion on the subject on TV3’s New Day, Saturday edition, asserted that “admitting 400 out of 2000 is a very dangerous thing for us”.

His position was supported by the member of Parliament for Builsa South, Dr. Clement Apaak. According to him, “it doesn’t make sense” for the law school to create such huge backlog of prospective lawyers.

He argued that the circumstance would give room for corruption because people may be tempted to bribe their way through due to the extremely difficult admission process.

Buttressing earlier submissions, political and economic analyst, Joe Jackson said the country needs more lawyers than there are in the system now, noting that almost every institution needs a lawyer.

But Dr. Ahmed Jinapor dissented, arguing that closing down Ghana School of Law is not proper and questioned the number of lawyers needed in a country with just about 27 million people.

The Ghana School of Law was established in 1958 by Ghana’s first President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.