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The Chief Justice, Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie, last Friday threw his weight behind the Director-General of the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), Professor Ahmed Jinapor, and his team for sanitising the tertiary education space.
“This sanitisation exercise that is going on is good. If you have not got public support for it, you should know that silently, there are lots and lots of people who may not be able to come out, but we all support you. So, continue with it,” he said.
Speaking during a courtesy visit to Prof. Jinapor and his team at the GTEC office in Accra, Justice Baffoe-Bonnie said, “Our first aim is to congratulate you on the good work you are doing.”
The visit was also to officially introduce himself, along with his key team members, to the Director-General and his management, as well as to discuss issues relating to legal education in the country.
The Chief Justice was accompanied by the Judicial Secretary, Musah Ahmed; the acting Director of the Ghana Law School, Professor Raymond A. Atuguba, and other support staff from the Chief Justice’s Secretariat.
Recalling his early days as a young man growing up at Goaso, the understanding was that professors were a very rare breed of people.
“But now, everybody is a professor, everybody is a doctor,” Justice Baffoe-Bonnie remarked and encouraged Prof. Jinapor to continue with the sanitation exercise.
Recalling his days in Nigeria, the Chief Justice said that at the time, almost everyone in the country was either a “Chief” or a “Dr,” adding that they had thought Ghana was not like that.
“But what we are seeing in the public space these days has gone beyond even what we saw in Nigeria. Everybody is a doctor, everybody is a professor,” he remarked.
Response
Responding, Prof. Jinapor was excited that, “ever since the coming into being of our institution that predates GTEC – the National Accreditation Board (NAB) and the National Council of Tertiary Education (NCTE), we have never had a Chief Justice here. This is the first time.”
He thanked the Chief Justice and his entourage for making time to visit the commission and assured him that GTEC was ready to work with his outfit, “to see how this whole revolution relative to legal education in Ghana can be one that is done, and done right”.
On fake PhD holders, Prof. Jinapor said it was not only fake doctors, “we are now having fake professors and if we are not careful, we will also get a fake Chief Justice.
“We honestly think the tertiary environment should be sanitised,” he said, stating that the commission was not limiting its exercise to academia.
He hinted that the commission had uncovered information within the legal profession indicating that some individuals lacked the foundational qualifications required even to sit for the law examination, yet had been called to the Bar as lawyers.
“We are conducting our investigation. Once we are sure about what we have, we will bring it to the General Legal Counsel for you to conduct further investigation for those people to be reprimanded.
“At the end of the day, we want the environment to be clean. We cannot have a corrupted legal system,” he stated, adding that the essence of legal education was to fight most of the things that were not right in society.
He assured the Chief Justice that GTEC would always do what was best to protect the integrity of the tertiary educational space.
Writer’s Email: severious.dery@graphic.com
