Justice Gertrude Torkornoo lost her job as Chief Justice of Ghana after President John Dramani Mahama acted on the recommendation of a 5-member committee set up to probe three petitions submitted to the President.

A report from the committee after probing one of the petitions submitted by a private citizen, Daniel Ofori, was presented to the president, leading to the removal of Justice Torkornoo from office as the Chief Justice of the country.

A letter issued by the Secretary to the President, Dr Calister Mahama, to Justice Torkornoo, which has not been refuted by the presidency, gave a summary of the reasons why she was removed.

Meet Daniel Ofori: The man whose petition got Gertrude Torkornoo sacked

Among the reasons why the committee found her guilty is an avoidable and reckless dissipation of public funds in her travel with her husband to Tanzania on one occasion, and with her daughter to the United States of America on another occasion.

The committee also found her guilty of unjustifiably breaching “the provisions in Article 296(a) and (b) of the 1992 Constitution, in the way and manner that she transferred Mr Baiden. Her conduct amounted to misbehaviour.”

Interestingly, before the report of the committee was presented to the president, the response of Justice Torkornoo to Daniel Ofori’s accusation leaked to the public.

At a press briefing in July 2025, she addressed the accusations against her, where she echoed the same points made in the leaked report.

In her response to the petitions lodged for her removal from office, Justice Torkornoo denied allegations of misappropriating GH¢261,890 of public funds for private foreign travel with her husband and daughter.

Is Torkornoo's removal truly unfair? - Ayikoi Otoo weighs in

According to her, the claim that her spouse and daughter were not entitled to have their travel funded by the Judicial Service is untrue and unfortunate within the context of her appointment letter and the Judicial Service Foreign Travel Policy.

“Mr Ofori’s petition includes a lie that I refused to retire accountable imprest of US$14,000 that I was given when I travelled. But records are available to show that I spent US$4,400 out of the US$14,000 accountable imprest that the finance directorate gave me to travel with. I handed over the remaining US$9,600 to the Judicial Secretary, with records on how the US$4,400 was spent, two days after I returned to Ghana. Without a settling of any issues for the hearing, I am being tried for these allegations that I have already provided records on,” she said.

She also denied the claim that her transfer of a judge in the case of Daniel Ofori was wrong, stating that the said judge was transferred because he had to deal with some family challenges.

“What Mr Ofori did not seem to know, which I stated in my answer to that allegation, is that the judge his case was transferred from had a family crisis and had to leave Ghana suddenly for an extended period. This is the only reason why cases he was handling, including Mr Daniel Ofori’s case, were distributed to other judges to handle,” she added.

Read her full response below:

Mr Daniel Ofori’s petition is the petition with the most claims. Only two out of the several allegations he makes involve Mr Daniel Ofori personally, as a court user. In one of those two allegations, Mr Daniel Ofori is urging that I should be removed as Chief Justice because I transferred a case in which he is a party, from one Judge in the high court to another. What Mr. Ofori did not seem to know, which I stated in my answer to that allegation, is that the Judge his case was transferred from, had a family crisis and had to leave Ghana suddenly for an extended period. This is the only reason why cases she was handling, including Mr Daniel Ofori’s case, were distributed to other Judges to handle. In the second allegation, he accuses me of transferring a case related to the first one, to the new Judge who took over his case, after a petition had been sent to me to have the two cases heard together. Again, any lawyer or Registrar could have informed him, that it is a policy written into the rules of court, to have cases between the same parties and involving the same issue, to be heard by one Judge. So there is no basis or truth to the allegations that I transferred his cases to a new Judge because I had an interest in his cases.

Indeed, in the year 2020, I wrote a dissenting opinion in one of Mr Ofori’s cases in the Supreme Court. He won that application because my dissenting opinion was the minority opinion of three Judges. The other four Judges supported his application. After that, his lawyers applied that I should not sit on his cases again, because I had presided over a different case involving him in the high court, which he lost. Since then, I have not sat on any matter involving him. What is also disturbing about the current article 146 proceedings is the fact that the cases in the high court that Mr Ofori complains about emanate from a judgment of the Supreme Court written by Justice Pwamang in Daniel Ofori’s favour. How can Justice Pwamang who gave judgment in favour of Daniel Ofori as part of a panel of the Supreme Court, and whose opinion I dissented with, making me a target of Mr Ofori’s anger, preside over processes to remove me as Chief Justice ostensibly for complaints Mr Ofori has?

I have already protested that there is a conflict of interest for Justice Pwamang to chair the Committee trying me on Daniel Ofori’s petitions. What Mr Ofori’s allegations seem to suggest is that, a court user can attack the Chief Justice and ask for the Chief Justice’s removal, if the Chief Justice does not agree with his case while sitting as a Judge, or if his preferred Judge(s) are unable to hear his or her cases. And now the Judge who supported his case, gets to preside over the removal process.

Apart from these two allegations, Mr Ofori has no personal interest in all the other allegations he makes, and ought not to be allowed to conduct a litigation against me in the disguise of an article 146 proceeding. In two allegations, he complains that I misappropriated public funds to buy a ticket for my husband and daughter to travel with me. In answer to this, I handed over my letter of appointment to prove that in my conditions of appointment, Ghana graciously gave me two vacations in a year as Chief Justice. In the Judicial Service Travel Policy since 2010, the Chief Justice can never travel alone for security reasons, and the Chief Justice is always allowed to travel with the spouse or another person of their choice.

So travelling on my officially given vacations with my husband on one occasion and my daughter for the second vacation is part of the official conditions of my appointment as Chief Justice. I was also not responsible for buying the tickets in question, such that I could be said to have ‘misappropriated’ the value of the tickets. Indeed, if the Judicial Service was not allowed to buy the tickets for my vacation, the remedy was for the Auditor General to surcharge me to refund the money. Anyone can check out the 2023 accounts of Judicial Service to know that there is no surcharge against me or anyone for the tickets purchased for my vacations. Mr Ofori seems to be alleging that I should have travelled with my police escort alone on vacation, and not a family member. This is why he wants me removed from office, and I am being tried at Adu Lodge. Ladies and gentlemen, the question to be asked is, why would anyone demand that I go on a vacation given to me as Chief Justice with my security escort alone, instead of going with my husband, or with my daughter? And how can this be a reason for subjecting a Chief Justice to a committee of inquiry?

Mr Ofori also complains that my family members should not have been given per diem when they travelled with me, and I have ‘misappropriated’ the per diem they were given. But anyone reading the Judicial Service travel policy will find that it provides that when the Chief Justice travels with anyone, whether police escort, another Judge, a secretary or spouse, that person is given per diem. And the rate of per diem is not set or administered by the Chief Justice. It is by regulations and administered by the Finance Directorate and Judicial Secretary, not the Chief Justice.

Mr Ofori’s petition includes a lie that that I refused to retire accountable imprest of US$14,000 that I was given when I travelled. But records are available to show that I spent US$4,400 out of the $14,000 accountable imprest that the finance directorate gave me to travel with. I handed over the remaining US$9,600 to the Judicial Secretary, with records on how the US$4,400 was spent, two days after I returned to Ghana. Without a settling of any issues for the hearing, I am being tried for these allegations that I have already provided records on.

In an arm of government where there are almost eight thousand staff, Mr Daniel Ofori’s petition contains allegations that I transferred one staff member of Judicial Service to work on a different schedule, and this is why I should be removed as Chief Justice. He also alleges that I have refused to reinstate two members of staff whose appointments were terminated around 2015, when I was no where near being Chief Justice, and whose issues are still in court. He also alleges that I should be removed for terminating the appointment of two staff members who went through disciplinary procedures that were initiated by reports against them before I became Chief Justice, leading to termination of their appointment. Though it is not clear to me why Mr Ofori should demand that the Chief Justice should be removed for transferring a member of staff, or being the final authority to sign any termination letter, I handed over to His Excellency the President, records covering every administrative step on these matters, supported by the due process administered by the right officers. And yet, I am being tried without the issue of a prima facie determination.

Another allegation of Mr Daniel Ofori is that I appointed a Judge as a Judicial Secretary, and it made her inefficient. The records show that the former Judicial Secretary was appointed as Judicial Secretary in 2018. She later became a Judge in 2019. I was nowhere near being Chief Justice. I was appointed Chief Justice in June, 2023. However, Mr Ofori says that because of these appointments made in 2018 and 2019, when I was not Chief Justice, I should be removed from office.

He also alleges that I have appointed Judges as registrars and this has introduced inefficiency into the management of courts. Again, the records show that the Judicial Council decided in May 2023, before I was appointed Chief Justice, that lower court judges should be appointed as registrars of the Supreme Court. So what I did was to implement the Judicial Council’s decision. All these records were made available before the suspension warrant was issued, and yet I am being tried, and the Committee refuses to make these records that I gave to His Excellency the President available to the Petitioners. Mr Daniel Ofori also makes the allegation that a certain gentleman met a different panel to hear his case in the Supreme Court, other than the panel he met five months earlier, so I should be removed as Chief Justice. He also claims that I refused to fix an application filed in Accra, in a case pending in Koforidua, for a panel sitting in Accra to hear the Koforidua case, and so I should be removed as Chief Justice. In another allegation, he complains that I supervised the Judicial Secretary to administer a decision of the General Legal Council taken before I became Chief Justice, and so I should be removed from office. Ladies and gentlemen, for all these allegations, if you read my responses which have been available on the internet for a long time, you will find that I provided records showing when, why, and how these decisions were taken.

There is also the complaint that I recommended Judges to be appointed to the Supreme Court, so I should be removed as Chief Justice. Ladies and gentlemen. Anyone who knows how appointments are made with recommendations from the Ghana Bar Association, the Attorney General and the Chief Justice, would know that this last complaint is ignorant of a long standing tradition. It has been the settled practice for decades that in the recommendation of Justices for the Superior Courts, the Chief Justice, the Ghana Bar Association, and the Attorney General all have the privilege of making recommendations on who should be nominated. The recommendation can be taken or refused by the President. There are members of the Superior Courts of Judicature today whose journey on to the Bench began with a recommendation by the Ghana Bar Association before the formal processes under the Constitution would be initiated by the President. I encourage everyone to read the judgment of the Supreme Court in the case of Ghana Bar Association and Others vrs Attorney-General [2015-2016],2 SCGLR 872.

How has it suddenly become unconstitutional, or wrong conduct, or incompetence for the Chief Justice to recommend to the President to consider for nomination, judges who in her view satisfy the constitutional standard of high moral integrity? Yet, despite all the evidence provided, I am being tried at Adu Lodge, without seeing what documents the panel was given to inquire into, and without my answers being provided to the inquiry for examination in chief and cross examination. I have taken this walk through Mr Ofori’s petition to show that the allegations have no bearing on sensitive national issues or public safety or order, or my inability to perform the functions of a Chief Justice. They have no basis in truth or law, and are nothing but an attempt to gather a lot of complaints together, regardless of whether they are true or not, whether they are justified or not, just to have an excuse for this “inquiry”, that breaks all the rules of fair hearing.

BAI/VPO

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