Former Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo has quietly left Ghana’s Council of State, months after her defence of an ousted Chief Justice triggered calls for her own removal.
President Mahama swore Akuffo and 30 other members into the ninth Council of State in February 2025, with former Speaker Edward Doe Adjaho as chairman. Akuffo led Ghana’s judiciary as the country’s 13th Chief Justice from 2017 to 2020. She is understood to have submitted her resignation toward the end of 2025 and has not attended a Council meeting since, including the most recent session three days ago. Neither Akuffo nor the Presidency has commented, and the reasons for her departure remain undisclosed.
Her time on the Council coincided with one of Ghana’s most consequential judicial disputes. In April 2025, the Council voted on whether a prima facie case existed against then Chief Justice Gertrude Torkornoo, with 30 of 31 members in favour. Akuffo was the only member to abstain. President Mahama signed the warrant removing Torkornoo on September 1, 2025.
Akuffo went further than her abstention. At Torkornoo’s request, she appeared before the Article 146 committee set up to examine the case and testified in her defence. In a September 2025 interview, she argued that Torkornoo had not received a fair hearing and that the allegations against her did not carry the weight needed to remove the head of a justice institution. She called the proceedings a “treason trial” and said they had weakened the judiciary.
Those remarks brought consequences of their own. Kwaku Ansa-Asare, a former director of the Ghana School of Law, accused Akuffo of breaching her oath of secrecy as a Council member, arguing that her comments indirectly disclosed confidential proceedings. United Party member Solomon Owusu went further, announcing plans to petition for her removal and questioning how she could testify for Torkornoo while still sitting on the Council that had voted on the prima facie case. Akuffo has not responded to either accusation.
Her resignation leaves the Council of State without one of its most outspoken recent members, with no replacement announced and the wider debate over the Council’s independence from the executive still running alongside the Torkornoo case.
