UEW Saga: Avoke 'no-show'

The dismissed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW), Professor Mawutor Avoke, and the Finance Director of the university, Theophilus Senyo Ackorlie, both failed to resume work today, Monday, 26 November 2018 as they had threatened earlier following a Supreme Court ruling.

Their lawyers had written to the university’s Governing Council asking them to prepare the offices of their clients to enable them to resume work today.

The apex court on Wednesday, 31 October 2018, by a unanimous decision, quashed, by certiorari, the judgment of the Winneba High Court, presided over by Justice George Ato Mills-Graves, dated 2 May 2018 in connection with the removal of Prof. Mawutor Avoke as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW).

The Supreme Court noted that having failed to take evidence from the parties before purporting to grant a judgment in default of defence on purely declaratory reliefs, the High Court had grievously erred and the said error was patent on the face of the record.

By this unanimous decision, the judgment of the Winneba High Court, based on which Prof Avoke was removed from office, stands quashed and is, therefore, null and void and of no effect.

Prof Avoke and five principal officers of the university were dismissed per the High Court judgment.

The Winneba High Court in 2017, ordered Professor Avoke, prior to his dismissal, to step aside until a case brought against him and the university’s Governing Council, was determined.

The order was made in a case brought before the court by one Supi Kofi Kwayera, who insisted that the Vice-Chancellor and the Finance Officer were operating under the institution’s defunct Governing Council.

The university, through its lawyers, even before the substantive claims were looked into, applied to the court to dismiss the suit on the three counts. The court, however, dismissed their application.

The High Court subsequently found Prof Avoke and the school’s Finance Officer, Dr Theophilus Senyo Ackorlie, guilty of procurement and other financial irregularities.

They were interdicted in July 2017 by the UEW Governing Council to allow for investigations after it emerged that some vital documents at some offices at the centre of an ongoing investigation, had gone missing.