The President and Chairman of Groupe Nduom, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, has drawn attention of lawyers to some fundamental flaws in the country’s constitution and teased their minds on how they could have helped to deal with those inadequacies.
Dr. Nduom believes as legal practitioners; such fundamental lapses should have engaged their attention right at the promulgation stage of Ghana’s Constitution in 1992.
Dr. Nduom was speaking at the 42nd University of Ghana Law School Week in Accra.
It was on the theme: The Law Profession & National Development. According to him, his search on Law shows a system of rules that are enforced by governments to govern behaviour.
Therefore actions of lawyers have the potential of shaping politics, economics, history and society in various ways. In the case of national development, Dr. Nduom disclosed that his further search shows the ability of a nation to improve the lives of its citizens such as improvement and increase in the gross domestic product, or social issues such as literacy rates and availability to provide adequate healthcare for the citizenry. “So our theme today looks to law and its practitioners to help shape the ability of our nation Ghana to improve the lives of its citizens,” Dr. Nduom noted, He, therefore, told the students that the “burden falls on all of us to change course and steer our nation on to a better path to prosperity and a good life,” and charged them as the future of the law profession in Ghana, “they should be open to new ideas”.
“I want to point out specific areas where you and the legal profession can support national development. When you succeed, Ghana will become a great and strong nation and its people will be prosperous,” Dr. Nduom declared. There were a number of constitutional issues that Dr. Nduom thought lawyers in the country should have dealt with.
These included the draconian nature of the 1992 Constitution; the coupling of the Attorney General’s Department and that of the Ministry of Justice; Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) at the basic level and election of Metropolitan Municipal District Chief Executives etc.
According to Dr. Nduom, when the 1992 Constitution was being crafted, some used a very flimsy excuse that the 3rd Republican President, Dr. Hilla Limann, had his budget torpedoed by his own "independent thinking" MPs from his own party to create a Constitutional dictatorship where one person rules over everything including the legislature, both national and local. Such draconian constitutional arrangement, Dr. Nduom said, is being exploited by some people including a lawyer, who he recently heard in a radio discussion suggesting to the electorate that his party should be given majority in Parliament “so that when his presidential candidate becomes President, he can push through his agenda easily.” Dr. Nduom, therefore, questioned what if on his agenda, (the lawyer) there are items that will not promote national development and asked the budding lawyers, where the lawyers were when, for instance, the 1992 Constitution was being crafted.”
He again asked where the lawyers were “when government headed by Presidents from two different political parties have ignored the provision to provide free, compulsory universal basic education?, and noted, “there are lawyers with big, big names in those two political parties”.
He then reminded the students about what the 4th Republican Constitution states in Chapter 6/Section 38 Sub-section 2: …..“The Government shall within two years after Parliament first meets after the coming into force of this Constitution draw up the programme for implementation within the following ten years for the provision of Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education" (FCUBE) Dr. Nduom waded into the Woyome scandal and threw the question to the country’s lawyers about what their actions had been “when someone received GHS51 million from the state and was asked to pay it back without interest even though the person who got the money demanded that interest be paid to him at every turn”? He wondered why some political types should argue that the "ordinary Ghanaian" cannot be trusted or are not ready to vote for their District Chief Executives, when indeed the same people are able to vote for an MP and President.
Dr. Nduom asked where the country’s lawyers when the Office of Attorney General and Ministry of Justice were coupled and named in the Constitution and believe it’s a provision that ought to be amended to ensure efficient delivery of justice and to reduce corruption.
He questioned what the country’s lawyers had done in the fight against corruption when indeed “office holders are required to file Asset Declaration papers with the Auditor-General but kept a secret from the public” In the view of Dr. Nduom, lawyers ought to join the crusade to enforce and aspects of the 1992 Constitution that are inimical “to our interests as a people, then you will put law and national development on the same level.”
