Members of Parliament and legal practitioners sharply disagreed on Saturday over the implications of a High Court decision that stripped the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) of its independent prosecutorial authority, with debate centred on whether the ruling was legally sound and whether the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) played a role in engineering the outcome.
Speaking on TV3’s Key Points on Saturday, April 18, 2026, the Member of Parliament for Suame, John Darko, accused the NDC government of orchestrating the legal challenge to neutralise the OSP now that the anti-corruption body had begun directing attention toward the current administration. He alleged that the timing of a bill to repeal the OSP Act, introduced the same week private legal practitioner Martin Kpebu was arrested, revealed a deliberate political strategy. “It is their wish to collapse the OSP, and that is what they are doing,” he said. He also accused the presiding judge of overstepping his authority in delivering the ruling.
Kpebu, appearing on the same programme, maintained that he supports the continued existence of the OSP as an institution but argued that the controversy surrounding Special Prosecutor Kissi Agyebeng stemmed from what he described as poor governance within the office. He called on the Supreme Court of Ghana to deliver a final and binding determination on the matter.
Ghana Shippers Authority Chief Executive Officer Professor Ransford Gyampo urged a measured approach to the debate, cautioning that legal contradictions in the OSP’s mandate could not simply be ignored in the pursuit of anti-corruption goals. He acknowledged that emotions had coloured much of the public discourse but insisted that the constitutional issues raised by the ruling deserved dispassionate analysis.
On JoyNews’ Newsfile, also broadcast on Saturday, Manhyia South Member of Parliament Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah argued that the High Court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case in the first place because the reliefs sought required constitutional interpretation, a function reserved exclusively for the Supreme Court. Senior Vice President of IMANI Africa and lawyer Kofi Bentil said the question of prosecutorial authorisation under Article 88 of the 1992 Constitution was not new and had been debated before the OSP was established through the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act, 2017 (Act 959).
The High Court ruling, delivered on Wednesday, April 15, 2026 by Justice John Eugene Nyadu Nyante, directed the Attorney General’s Department to assume control of all criminal prosecutions previously handled by the OSP, declaring those proceedings null and void pending formal authorisation. The OSP has since announced plans to challenge the ruling, insisting the High Court exceeded its jurisdiction and that only the Supreme Court can invalidate provisions of an Act of Parliament. A separate constitutional case challenging the legality of Act 959 is already pending before the Supreme Court.
