Former Speaker of Parliament, Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye, is backing the calls for the scraping of the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP), over what he describes as abuse of its powers.
He says the Office was created for a specific purpose, which is to investigate corruption and corruption-related issues, particularly of government officials.
However, he believes the office has outlived its usefulness, with regards to recent developments pertaining to its functions.
His call comes on the back of the OSP’s detention of legal practitioner, Martin Luther Kpebu, after his invitation to aid in an ongoing investigation.
Commenting on the issue on Ghana Tonight on TV3 Wednesday, December 3, 2025, Prof. Oquaye slammed the OSP’s refusal to let Mr. Kpebu’s lawyers know where he was being detained, calling it a serious abuse of the legal process.
“The man has brought lawyers into the case, his lawyers don’t know where he is… that’s a serious abuse of office and some people must be sanctioned for that. It’s an abuse of the legal process,” he said.
Prof. Oquaye stressed that the 1992 Constitution demands discretionary powers be used to uphold basic principles of law, which he believes the OSP failed to do in Kpebu’s case.
When asked by host Alfred Ocansey if he expects a private member’s bill in Parliament to dissolve the OSP, Prof. Oquaye said: “Looking at what is happening and the blatant abuse of human rights and also the fact that I’ll prefer that existing institutions are strengthened rather than having multiplicity of them with all manner of problems for us…, –go and look for the man in this particular office, no he’s not…now he’s with another organisation and so on and so forth, what is this?”
He wants Ghana to revert to the era where the Directorate of Public Prosecution was strong and made prosecutions on behalf of the state, rather than adding more institutions to create confusion.
He said the nation has had strong prosecutors before, “therefore if you look at the benefit of hindsight, you’d better go and do ‘sankofa‘ and strengthen the office of the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) and then do things straight and right and according to the true tenets of the law.”
Background
Martin Kpebu was detained by the OSP for nearly five hours before he was released on Wednesday night, December 3, 2025. This was after he had been accused of obstructing an officer of the Special Prosecutor same day.
In an interview with TV3 after his release, Mr Kpebu said his detention was needless.
“I know I have not done anything wrong, so I will be released,” he said.
He confirmed that he had an altercation with a military officer at the OSP. “The military officer said I am stupid, and I also said he is stupid. So we exchanged words,” he recalled.
According to him, “my arrest is a confirmation that Kissi Agyebeng is incompetent.”
Mr Kpebu reiterated his resolve to petition President Mahama for the removal of Kissi Agyebeng from Office as Special Prosecutor. “I will petition for his removal. I have 15 allegations against him,” he stated.
Earlier, news broke that the Office of the Special Prosecutor had detained Mr Kpebu at an undisclosed location.
One of his lawyers gave a blow-by-blow account on circumstances leading to his arrest and subsequent detention by officials of the OSP.
According to Marcellinus Biah, the OSP officials charged Mr. Kpebu with obstructing an officer of the Special Prosecutor.
Here is a verbatim account as narrated by Mr. Biah in an interview on TV3’s News360 on December 3.
“So, this afternoon at about two o’clock, we attended the invitation of the Office of the Special Prosecutor to assist them in investigations. So, while we were at the premises, Martin granted an interview outside the premises of the Office of the Special Prosecutor and returned. So, it appears that one of the officers, that is, the police officer at the gate was not too happy with Martin granting an interview outside the premises of the Office of the Special Prosecutor. Martin actually telling him that, no, there was nothing wrong with him granting an interview and subsequently attending to the inquiry.
He continued that, “And so there was some amount of altercation between, verbal exchange between him and then the officer. Thereafter, Martin proceeded to attend to the inquiry committee. So while we were, I mean, having discussions with the inquiry committee, in the course of that they told Martin that he had actually obstructed an officer of the Special Prosecutor and for that matter, he was going to be charged.
Meanwhile, let me be quick to add that when the altercation took place, Martin was first to even request to make a complaint against the third officer. But we’re told that the complaint center was not available to take our complaints. So, Martin proceeded to the inquiry board committee and presented a complaint before them.”
That’s the charge. Yes. So eventually they said he was briefly admitted to bail. In addition to that, he was to present one surety. So, I quickly drove back to the office, which is just about 10 minutes’ drive.
They whisked him away. As we speak now, we are unable to tell where Mr Kpebu is.”
You can’t suppress Ghanaians’ freedom of speech – Prof. Oquaye slams OSP over Kpebu’s detention
