Most Ghanaian magistrates are corrupt – Tony Aidoo

Head of Policy Monitoring and Evaluation at the Presidency, Dr. Tony Aidoo, is advocating an overhaul of the country’s judicial system to enable the lower courts serve useful purposes.

According to him, the judicial system has become too rigid in adapting to modern trends in adjudicating cases, giving rise to incidences of dishonesty at the lower court.

“…if you have a system that is as rigid as the skin of the dinosaur as we have here (in Ghana) today, you will not get anywhere!

Most of the magistrates for instance are corrupt,” he yelled while contributing to discussions on improving customer service quality in the country on the Super Morning Show on Joy FM, Wednesday, January 15, 2014.

The Ambassador- designate, therefore, suggested the establishment of an administrate court below the magistrate court to adjudicate “minor” cases as well as make litigation less expensive.

“So an administrative court will solve so many problems for us; you’ll have electoral disputes for instance going through the administrative courts rather than the Supreme Court.

“You’ll have judicial review processes going through the administrative court but not the Supreme Court and it will make litigation of these issues very, very cheap and simple”.

“At the lower end of the judicial system, we need to follow British example of the registrar’s court which deals with minor issues,” he proposed.

Speaking on the same platform, Lawyer and Criminologist, Professor Kenneth Agyemang Attefuah stressed on the need for persons in public service to be efficient and transparent in their dealings with the citizenry.

“Serving the people is not like buying tomato in the market…you can’t treat people capriciously,” Prof. Attefuah cautioned.

He called for “broad public education on customer service” which according to him is long overdue, for members of the public to report appropriately, public officials who misconduct themselves in the line of performing customer service.

myjoyonline.com