Bailiffs last Wednesday (March 5, 2025) served the former Member of Parliament  (MP) for Hohoe, John Peter Amewu, a substituted service to appear before the Koforidua Court of Appeal. 

The Court of Appeal sitting in Koforidua ordered that an appeal challenging the validity of the election of a former MP for Hohoe be served on him through substituted service.

The order by the court followed an application for substituted service by the five petitioners who argued that it had become impracticable to personally serve the appeal process on the former MP.

Pursuant to the order of the second highest court of the land, the substituted service should be done by posting the court processes on the notice boards of the court as well as at the residence of Mr Amewu.

Petition

In December 2020, five residents from Santrokofi, Akpafu, Lolobi and Likpe (SALL) petitioned the Ho High Court to nullify the election of Mr Amewu on the basis that the exclusion of the SALL people from the election was unjust.

The voters from SALL did not participate in the 2020 parliamentary elections, and were left out without representation in the 8th Parliament, following the carving out of the Oti Region from the Volta Region.

In July 2024, the Ho High Court dismissed the petition for want of jurisdiction, holding that the petition was questioning the constitutionality of Constitutional Instrument (CI) 128, the legal instrument the Electoral Commission (EC) relied upon to conduct the 2020 parliamentary elections, and, therefore, it was within the purview of the Supreme Court and not  the High Court.

It is based on the above decision that the five petitioners have filed an appeal.

Supreme Court decision

Prior to the High Court’s decision, the Supreme Court,  in March 2021, quashed an order by the Ho High Court  which placed an injunction on Mr Amewu .

In a unanimous decision on Tuesday (January 5, 2020), a five-member panel of the apex court held that the Ho High Court had no jurisdiction to grant the two orders.

According to the court, the orders by the court were in the nature of parliamentary election petition but the original case which led to the orders were related to human rights violation, and, therefore, the Ho High Court had no jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court further held that the legal dispute at the Ho High Court was a human rights case as a result of the decision of the EC not to allow the people of SALL to vote in the December 2020 parliamentary election.

The court wondered why Mr Amewu, the MP-elect for Hohoe, should suffer due to a decision taken by the EC.

“Mr John Peter Amewu has nothing to do with the denial of the people of the SALL area to vote in the parliamentary election.

He was not an agent of the EC, he was just a candidate who put himself up for election,” the court held.

According to the court, the five individuals were challenging an alleged violation of their human rights due to the action of the EC, and, therefore, there was no need for Mr Amewu to be dragged into it.