The Africa Centre for Security and Counterterrorism (ACSC) has followed with close attention the passage of the Tribunals Bill, 2026, by Parliament on Thursday, 16 July 2026, the walkout of the Minority Caucus that preceded the vote, the objections of the Trades Union Congress, and the subsequent address to the nation by the Flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party calling on the President to withhold assent.
As a non-partisan policy institution devoted to security, justice, and democratic resilience, the ACSC offers the following considered position.
1. The Objective Is Legitimate
Ghana’s courts are congested. The Attorney-General’s own figures point to thousands of new backlogged cases accumulating annually, and delayed justice is denied justice, most acutely for poor and rural citizens who cannot sustain years of litigation.
Articles 126 and 142 of the 1992 Constitution expressly contemplate the establishment of Regional Tribunals as part of the judicial architecture. The desire to operationalise dormant constitutional provisions and to decentralise justice delivery to the district level is, in itself, neither novel nor sinister. The ACSC affirms the objective.
2. But the Process Has Undermined the Product
Three features of the Bill’s passage trouble us. First, sequencing: the Government’s own Constitution Review Committee, established by the President, is yet to publish its report, and is reported to have recommended the removal of Regional Tribunals from the Constitution on the ground that the High Court has long absorbed their functions.
To legislate ahead of one’s own review process is to legislate against it. Second, haste: the waiver of the mandatory one-day interval between consideration and third reading, and passage at dawn, are procedures appropriate to emergencies, not to structural judicial reform intended to last generations.
Third, breadth of dissent: when organised labour, the Trades Union Congress, speaking for millions of Ghanaian workers, joins the parliamentary Minority in warning that the Bill could become a tool for weaponising justice delivery, the opposition can no longer be dismissed as partisan.
3. Clause 4 Requires Sober Reflection
The provision permitting persons who are not lawyers to serve on panels adjudicating criminal matters carries historical weight that no Ghanaian government should take lightly.
The tribunal system of the PNDC era remains, for many citizens, a memory of justice without due process.
A modern tribunal regime must be visibly different from that of the past: legally qualified chairpersons, binding rules of evidence and procedure, full rights of appeal into the regular court hierarchy, and security of tenure for adjudicators.
Where these safeguards are present, they must be communicated; where they are absent, they must be inserted.
4. Our Recommendations
1. The President should pause assent and refer the Bill for broader national consultation, in consultation with the Council of State, until the Constitution Review Committee’s report is published and reconciled with the Bill.
2. The Attorney-General should publish a plain-language memorandum explaining the safeguards in the Bill, particularly on Clause 4, appellate pathways, and the independence of the Tribunal Oversight Committee, so that public debate proceeds on facts rather than fears.
3. Parliament’s leadership should convene a multi-stakeholder review involving the Judiciary, the Ghana Bar Association, organised labour, and civil society before the law is operationalised, whether or not assent is granted.
4. Both the majority and the minority should lower the partisan temperature. Justice reform built on parliamentary numbers alone will not command public confidence; justice reform abandoned to partisan reflex will not address the backlog. Ghana can do better than either.
5. Conclusion
The measure of a justice reform is not the speed of its passage but the confidence it commands.
A tribunal system that citizens trust would be a genuine contribution to access to justice in Ghana. A tribunal system that citizens fear would be a wound to the very Constitution it claims to serve.
The choice between the two remains open and lies, at this moment, in the sequencing, consultation, and safeguards that we urge upon the Government.
By Emmanuel Mawanye Kotin
Executive Director
