YOUR LORDSHIP, JUSTICE MUST ALSO BE SEEN TO BE DONEBy Elizabeth Ohene
Your Lordship, the Chief Justice,
I have watched the four-minute video clip in which you recount your visit to some state institutions, particularly the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT).
In it, you speak approvingly of how well SSNIT is doing today, compared with its condition some time ago, when it was even preparing to “sell its prized asset, Labadi Beach Hotel.” You then wonder, or perhaps lament, what happened during the preceding eight years and how Ghana could have sunk so low. Never mind that the new management is also reportedly seeking strategic investors for the hotels, undoubtedly to sink SSNIT back to those same depths you believe it had sunk under the previous administration.
Since I served as Chairperson of the SSNIT Board of Trustees from August 2021 until 6 January 2025, I assume that I was one of the people busily digging those depths from which, according to your account, the institution has now so miraculously ascended. I had not realised we were underground at the time, but one learns something new every day, especially from visiting dignitaries.
Your Lordship also referred to “all the things we had all heard” before your visit. I hope this was not the royal “we”. What the whole country and, thanks to the internet, much of the world, heard were lurid claims of “stinking corruption” surrounding what became known as the SSNIT Hotels Scandal. For that, we may thank the vigilance and megaphone of the Member of Parliament for North Tongu, now Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa.
Your Lordship will recall that Mr Ablakwa, invoking “God and country”, petitioned the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), alleging serious corruption by the SSNIT Board and Management in connection with the proposed divestment of a 60 per cent interest in SSNIT-owned hotels.
The accusations produced the required national theatre. Headlines screamed, radio studios boiled and social media pronounced judgment with its customary patience for evidence. Organised labour groups, including university teachers, nurses and emergency health workers, threatened industrial action. Demonstrations followed, complete with placards identifying the villains already convicted in the court of public opinion. The small inconvenience of an investigation, trial and a verdict could, apparently, be attended to later.
Who knows? Had Your Lordship occupied your present office then, perhaps the courts might also have threatened to close their doors in solidarity. On the evidence of your recent enthusiasm, the Judiciary might even have supplied placards, properly stamped and with messages calling for a “Reset.”
My name, Elizabeth Ohene, then Chairperson of the SSNIT Board, featured prominently on those placards and was repeatedly tied to allegations of corruption. I was abused, vilified and deliberately subjected to severe reputational damage. This was not an abstract political quarrel. It was a public assault on the integrity of identifiable people.
I have spent my life in public and private service without tolerating corruption or acquiring a taste for it. I do not require anyone to confer integrity upon me as a favour. But when an allegation is made, presumably investigated and allowed to hang indefinitely over a person’s name, justice demands an answer, not a permanent cloud, only to be thickened this week by the gentleman whose job it is to pronounce judgment from the fountain of justice.
SSNIT instructed its lawyers to file a detailed response to the CHRAJ petition, and they did. In the interests of national peace and security, SSNIT also suspended the divestment process. We did so in the reasonable expectation that CHRAJ would investigate the accusations thoroughly and publish its findings.
More than two years later, there has been no public update, no finding, no declaration that the allegations were established and no announcement that they were dismissed. The accusations arrived with a brass band, bloggers, television cameras and a street procession; the truth appears to have been given a number and asked to wait quietly by the gutters where reputations were dragged through the mud.
The only notable public pronouncement since then is Your Lordship’s cheerful dispatch on the new and improved SSNIT. A transformation so sudden and complete that one half expected the four-minute video to end with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
M’Lord, I sincerely hope that, amid the good news and guided tour, somebody remembered to mention the financially healthier SSNIT that we left behind in January 2025. I hope you were told that Labadi Beach Hotel became the “prized asset” you now celebrate because of difficult decisions taken under the very administration you appear so eager to consign to the national basement. There are audited accounts and verified records available, should facts be permitted to interrupt the celebrations.
I also hope you were briefed on the precarious condition of SSNIT inherited by the Akufo-Addo administration in 2017, and on the work undertaken thereafter to put the pension fund on a more credible footing. It may interest you, since I am reliably informed that you will join us pensioners before the end of this year.
The hotels controversy, dramatic though it was, is ultimately a sideshow. The real danger is the weakening and politicisation of a pension fund entrusted with the retirement security of Ghanaian workers. That is what should concern every citizen, and especially those who speak from institutions whose authority depends upon public confidence.
Your Lordship, it took me almost twenty-four hours to decide whether to respond. I was frankly incredulous that the Chief Justice would place himself in such a position and use such painfully partisan language in a public video.
You are, of course, entitled to a personal relationship with the President of the Republic. It is indeed patriotic to desire his success, so long as you believe it would not take a third term for that to be achieved. You may even advertise it, if you consider subtlety an overrated judicial virtue. But you are also head of the third arm of government. That office requires more than independence in fact; it demands the appearance of independence, manifestly so.
Yet, in the video, you adopted the language of presidential security officers alerting one another that the President was approaching. Even the most industrious flatterers on the presidential staff usually manage a little more restraint, or at least wait until the cameras are switched off. I once wrote an entire article about the habit of calling powerful bosses “the old man”. It did not occur to me then that the Chief Justice of the Republic might one day audition for the chorus.
This is not merely a quarrel over vocabulary, tone or presidential pet names. A Chief Justice who publicly declares, in effect, that Ghana sank to its lowest depths under one administration and is now blossoming under another cannot be surprised when citizens wonder whether litigants associated with the unfavoured side should arrive in court armed not only with lawyers and authorities, but perhaps also with life jackets.
Our recent history should make the occupant of your office especially alert to such appearances. When a judicial succession emerges from an unprecedented and controversial removal of a predecessor, the new officeholder inherits more than robes, chambers and the preferred seat at official ceremonies; he inherits a special duty to reassure the country that the scales of justice are not recalibrated (or reset) whenever political power changes hands. Discretion, in such circumstances, is not cowardice. It is institutional wisdom and, occasionally, excellent self-preservation.
Your Lordship, since you have found it proper to comment on SSNIT’s supposed “low” years, I trust you will find it equally proper to ask what became of the CHRAJ petition filed by Mr Okudzeto Ablakwa more than two years ago. Surely, all citizens are entitled to answers when grave allegations of corruption are made against those entrusted with workers’ pension funds. If there was indeed “stinking corruption”, then perhaps, at your next suitably informal encounter, you might ask “the old man” to encourage the Attorney-General to bring the culprits before the courts without further delay, including during legal vacations.
I have no doubt that Your Lordship would ensure that a courtroom and, one hopes, an unmistakably impartial judge would be ready to hear the case, so that Ghana might complete its celebrated ascent from the depths. A small judicial contribution to the national reset, if you like.
It may be that Your Lordship is interested only in how pleasant things appear today. Guided visits can have that effect. I do not enjoy that luxury. I find it intolerable that grave allegations should be shouted from rooftops, reputations destroyed, national stability endangered and then the search for truth quietly abandoned once the political usefulness of the accusations has expired.
Justice, we are often reminded, must not only be done; it must be seen to be done. It should also resist the temptation to provide political commentary during official excursions, however rare. The same demand for visibility applies to integrity. Silence after a public accusation is not justice. It is punishment without a verdict, although, admittedly, it is much less troublesome than producing evidence.
