Private legal practitioner, Kofi Bentil, has disagreed with calls to scrap the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP).
He made the point that the OSP was well contemplated and discussed at various forums before being instituted.
In a Facebook post, “we may not like what the OSP has become, but I don’t agree with those who say it must be scrapped! We can’t be changing course with every problem! The OSP was well contemplated and discussed at various forums before being instituted; many of us were part of the process and haven’t forgotten that it was not meant to be a final stop.
“It is rather the first major step in renewing our State legal systems, especially Prosecution, which was tackled first because of rampant corruption affecting mostly people in the presidency, and the realisation that NO ATTORNEY GENERAL APPOINTED BY A SITTING PRESIDENT WAS WILLING OR ABLE TO PROSECUTE HIS COLLEAGUES IN CABINET or even their subordinates!.
“There are other legal offices in the system which also need modernisation to provide legal advice to the eternal State system ie Government/Administration, and also specifically to the temporal elected President/Head of State. The next steps are to separate the office of the Solicitor General from the Attorney General and appoint a Legal Counsel to the President (as many presidents have done recently). This way, we complete the circle. What we call OSP today becomes the Directorate of Public Prosecutions, whose head is not part of the elected government, and is in charge of all prosecutions.
“What we call Solicitor General today becomes the Independent office or Directorate of the Solicitor general to advise the government/Administration on contracts and legal but non-prosecutorial matters. Then what we call Attorney-General today, becomes Counsel to the President, who advises the elected and temporal government/President. He comes and goes with the President, but the others have their terms of office specified. We have to evolve with the times, we have already said the present system wont work because no Attorney General who is part of a government, would prosecute members of his government under the President who appointed them all! so lets keep moving and not be sidetracked when specific persons lose their way in office.”
His comments come at a time when a former Speaker of Parliament, Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye, said that a Private Members Bill could be prepared and taken to parliament for the dissolution of the Office of the Special Prosecutor.
Prof Mike Oquaye believed that the Attorney-General’s Department should be resourced and strengthened to undertake the investigations and prosecutions.
“Parliament can have A private members’ bill to dissolve this office if that is the situation we are going to have in this country, and then strengthen the AG office,” he said on the Ghana Tonight show on TV3, Wednesday, December 3.
Prof Oquaye argued that instead of creating more such institutions, the Attorney-General’s department should be strengthened to undertake the investigations and the prosecutions.
Speaking on the arrest and detention of private legal practitioner Martin Kpebu by the OSP, on TV3’s Ghana Tonight show on Wednesday, December 3, he said, “Instead of making the AG department very strong to prosecute, we create something else.
“I believe that we are not creating strong institutions; we keep on just proliferating and adding, and then we get confused in the process. I think what is happening now is very unfortunate, and all well-meaning Ghanaians must condemn it. Bail being used to show people where power lies is not a yesterday matter; we have known this decades ago. Bail being manipulated in this regard, there is no principle in law anywhere in a civilised country, the bail that must be justified must have landed property in the name of the person who is a suspect? Does that mean that people who don’t have landed properties can never get bail? What is this? These are matters of principles, issues of law, issues of human rights. Now, because they can’t get the man on what they really wanted, they say Why do you grant an interview? Do you want to suppress his freedom of speech? You cannot question his granting an interview.
“If this arbitrariness is allowed to continue, it will be a fundamental violation of the rule of law in this country. Some of us just cannot stand the abuse of people’s human rights, it has been going on for some time in this country since 7th of January 7th. I will advocate that we should address this proliferation of institutions of investigations and strengthen the institutions that are already there. If that should happen, it will help our country.”
Prof Mike Oquaye further said the Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng did not have any business to invite, arrest and detain Martin Kpebu.
He explained that if Kpebu had made a corruption allegation against the Special Prosecutor, the best action to have been taken was to sue him or refer him to another agency, unless there was a crime involved.
Prof Oquaye, also a former lawmaker for Dome Kwabenya, said, ” It is most unfortunate, most unfortunate, even more so because we need a certain amount of stability, peace, decorum in this republic. to go about our developmental matters. In the first place, the SP did not even have any business inviting Kpebu. If Kpebu says you are corrupt, you can sue him, or you can refer him to another agency if you think there is a crime; look into that because your business is to investigate corruption. Is Kpebu being charged with corruption?”
After nearly 5 hours of detention by the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP), Private Legal Practitioner Martin Kpebu has been released.
Mr Kpebu was detained on December 3 for obstructing an officer of the Special Prosecutor. Speaking 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. Mr Kpebu 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 Mr Kissi Agyebeng from Office. “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 of the circumstances leading to his arrest and subsequent detention by officials of the Office of the Special Prosecutor.
According to Mr 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.”
They whisked him away. As we speak now, we are unable to tell where Mr Kpebu is.”
