Oliver Barker-Vormawor Demands Sweeping Reforms to End Chief Justice’s ‘Abuse of Power’

Oliver Barker-Vormawor, a lawyer and fiery public advocate, blasts the justice system with a bold reform proposal to end what he calls the Chief Justice’s unchecked “abuse of power.” In a hard-hitting Facebook post that reads like a manifesto for change, Barker-Vormawor laid out a ten-point blueprint for transforming Ghana’s legal system from top to bottom, stripping authority from the Chief Justice and dismantling the General Legal Council’s (GLC) hold on legal education.

The post quickly went viral, igniting support across the legal community and beyond. Constitutional law heavyweight Professor H. Kwesi Prempeh joined the call for reform, adding his powerful twist: an eleventh recommendation to cap the number of justices at every level of the superior courts, stoking even more controversy over Ghana’s judicial future.

Barker-Vormawor’s top priority? Stripping the Chief Justice of their power to handpick judges for cases. Labelling this as the Chief Justice’s “self-proclaimed empanelling power,” Barker-Vormawor said it invites abuse and corrodes the fairness of the judiciary. “The abuse is too much,” he wrote, calling for the Judicial Council—not the Chief Justice—to handle judge transfers, a change he says would restore much-needed credibility to a system that’s seen as overly centralized and prone to personal manipulation.

Barker-Vormawor didn’t pull any punches on the General Legal Council either. His manifesto demands the total removal of judges from the GLC, asserting they should “stay in the courtroom only.” He argues that the GLC’s influence stretches far beyond its mandate, creating conflicts of interest that stymie Ghana’s legal profession. His solution? Establish the Ghana School of Law as an independent institution, free from GLC oversight, and permit private and public universities to create their law schools. By opening up legal education to more institutions, Barker-Vormawor believes Ghana can break free from the GLC’s restrictive grip.

To cap it off, Barker-Vormawor wants a new Board of Legal Education to oversee the Professional Bar Exams, holding them biannually—a drastic shift he says will end the GLC’s monopoly over the legal profession’s licensing. This change, he argues, would remove bottlenecks, empowering aspiring lawyers to qualify without needless delays or bureaucratic hoops.

He’s also advocating scrapping the GLC’s Disciplinary Committee, declaring that professional misconduct should fall to Bar Associations and tort law, not a centralized disciplinary board. This, he insists, would prevent the GLC from overstepping its reach into the lives of practising lawyers.

Barker-Vormawor even wants mandatory pupillage—the supervised training for new lawyers—abolished. He says this outdated requirement is a stumbling block for fresh graduates and stifles their careers from the outset. Eliminating it, he argues, would open doors for young legal minds to enter the profession unhindered by unnecessary formalities.

Professor Prempeh, a titan in Ghanaian constitutional law, added fuel to the fire by suggesting an eleventh reform: a cap on the number of judges in the superior courts. Prempeh argues this would stop “court-packing” and prevent any administration from flooding the judiciary with sympathetic judges. His cap, however, allows for flexibility, proposing a mechanism to expand the limit only when justified—a safeguard against politically motivated appointments.

Together, Barker-Vormawor and Prempeh’s proposals paint a damning picture of Ghana’s judiciary as plagued by unchecked power, particularly in the hands of the Chief Justice and the GLC. Their reforms call for redistributing this power to bring fairness back to the justice system, ending what they see as dangerous authority overreach.

Whether Ghana will embrace this bold reform agenda is yet to be seen. But Barker-Vormawor’s unflinching critique has sent shockwaves across the legal sphere, forcing Ghanaians to confront the foundations of their judicial system like never before.

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