Our court officials must live above reproach

According to Article of 125 (1) of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, “justice emanates from the people and shall be administered in the name of the Republic by the judiciary which shall be independent and subject only to this Constitution”. The gist of this provision is that justice (fairness) resides in the bosom of Ghanaians and that the power to administer it on behalf of Ghanaians has been entrusted to the judiciary. This means that judicial powers should be exercised to promote the welfare of the citizenry.

OUR SUPREME INTEREST

Thus, it behooves us as Ghanaians to ensure that that our natural and inalienable right (justice) is carried out by those that we have entrusted onto to uphold our supreme interest and welfare. Accordingly, we must constructively criticize court officials who uses the power entrusted to them for their own parochial interest to the disadvantage of the larger society. Indeed, when any administrative official acts in a manner that violates a principle of fairness and reasonableness, the watchdog role of the general society must be invoked.
CORRUPTION
In most of my articles, I indicated that corruption seems to have become an ordained custom in the Ghanaian society. Put more elegantly, this devil has become “sweet” to many Ghanaians; hence we seem to see nothing wrong with it so far as it satisfies our personal whims and caprices to the disadvantage of the vulnerable in our society and the image of our dear nation. While the canker is deeply rooted in most public and private institutions, the judiciary must be the last point of checking and punishing this negative trait. The judiciary cannot be morally and legally justified to judge and punish others for the same offence of which it is guilty. We should understand that “if the citadel of justice is corrupt, what will happen to the body politics” as one Nigerian writer in his book, “The Incorruptible Judge” rightly put it. A United States of America judge has said that “if we are able to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment; THOU SHALL NOT RATION JUSTICE”.
ASH TOWN COURT IN KUMASI
Undoubtedly, the perception of the corruption in the judiciary is real, factual and present. This negative view must change. It will change if the frequent reports of missing dockets in the custody of some of our law courts are discontinued. The acuity will however mature into seeming reality if some court officials continue to “extort” money from litigants so that their cases could provided with in earlier dates to be heard by our courts. It was an eyesore and very surprising to me when I witnessed some of these cases in Ash Town Court in Kumasi in the middle of last year. Quite unexpectedly, just last month, a renowned journalist in Kumasi got his docket missing in this same court.
These menaces are indeed assuming alarming rates in some of our law courts and it is high time the generally high-principled members of our judiciary took steps to remedy this aberrant conduct.
BEST OF JUSTICE
In concluding, it must be emphasized that Ghanaians deserve the best of justice and that our court officials should not use the power of their official positions to deny us of something we have entrusted to them. There is no justice if litigants get access to judicial remedies only where they have paid an unlawful extra cost for what they deserve to be given upon request. It therefore follows without saying that by law and prudence, our court officials must live above reproach to avert most of the misconception or the negative conception of corruption about them.