Director of Strategy, Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP), Sammy Darko, has said that the law grants the Special Prosecutor a seven-year fixed term of office.
He says the Special Prosecutor cannot be fired at the will of the President.
Speaking on the Law programme on Joy News Sunday, December 14, Sammy Darko recalled that during the past administration, petitions were submitted to the president for the First Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu to be removed from office, but those petitions were dismissed.
He said, “The lawmaker also granted fixed tenure of office for the special prosecutor, which is that the special prosecutor currently enjoys a seven-year nonrenewable tenure. He cannot be fired at the will of the president, so the difference between the special prosecutor and the other agencies, such as the IGP or the EOCO head or the NIB head, is that whereas they can be fired at the will of the president, the special prosecutor cannot be fired at the will of the president. The special prosecutor and the Deputy cannot be fired at the will of the president; that is why, in the past administration, two persons filed a petition to remove Martin Amidu, the first Special Prosecutor, but both petitions were dismissed as not having any grounds to initiate even investigations into the matter.
“Currently, you have other people who have filed other petitions that want to remove [Kissi Agyebneg]. That tells you the mechanism they put in place in the law, that is, the special prosecutor cannot be fired or hired at the will of the president. So tomorrow, for instance, the president, if he is not happy with the A-G or the EOCO boss, can fire them, but not the Special Prosecutor and the Deputy.”
Host of the programme who is also a lawyer, Samson Lardy Anyenini added to his submission that if the Special Prosecutor and the Deputy will have to be removed, they will have to be taken through a special process on stated grounds of misbehaviour.
Sammy Darko further stated that the OSP has done remarkably well over the past years.
“So far, the OSP has done remarkably well, if you look at how young it is. We do appreciate that people often want to measure the OSP from 2018 when it was set up, but the OSP has had teething problems with its setup. We see that the first Special Prosecutor did not complete his tenure and left office.
“[Kissi Agyebeng] decided to rebuild the office. What people do not know is that we have been building this office from scratch, which means apart from an empty building that was donated to the office, the office has to be built from scratch, which means you need to develop all the divisions of the office, employ people, you need to put in the infrastructure to be able to investigate.
“Kissi Agyebeng took over in 2021, and it was not until 2023 that the office had its full staff with realistic logistics to be able to work. Remember that the office was also set up without an establishment budget, so the office is being built from the annual budget, which is not enough. Even as we speak, we do not have a forensic lab.”
