Ghana’s first Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu, has argued in a new open letter that the Supreme Court has legal grounds to affirm the prosecutorial authority of the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP), citing a key regulation he helped draft and a landmark United States Supreme Court ruling as persuasive precedents.
The letter, dated April 23, 2026, is Amidu’s third published contribution in less than a week on a constitutional dispute that has placed the OSP’s future in serious doubt.
The controversy was triggered by an Accra High Court ruling on April 15, 2026, which held that the OSP does not have constitutional authority to independently prosecute criminal cases without formal authorisation from the Attorney-General. The court ordered that all ongoing OSP prosecutions be transferred to the Attorney-General’s Department. A separate case challenging the constitutionality of the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act, 2017 (Act 959) is also pending before the Supreme Court.
In his latest submission, Amidu pointed to Regulation 11 of the Office of the Special Prosecutor (Operations) Regulations, 2018, known as Legislative Instrument (L.I.) 2374, which states that the Special Prosecutor or an authorised officer shall, upon considering facts and evidence gathered from an investigation, take a decision on whether or not to prosecute. He argued this provision constitutes a legally valid delegation of prosecutorial authority from the Attorney-General to the Special Prosecutor, embedded within the framework of Act 959 itself.
Amidu disclosed that he personally shaped the final form of the regulations alongside then Attorney-General Gloria Akuffo, saying the original draft was structured more like a commission of inquiry and had to be substantially reworked based on his experience as a former prosecutor. “We were not working in isolation. It was a coordinated effort to make the office functional,” he said.
He warned that the deepening tension between the two offices is undermining Ghana’s anti-corruption framework, noting that disputes over case files and prosecutorial jurisdiction slow down justice delivery and erode public confidence.
Amidu also called on Ghana’s Supreme Court to consider the reasoning of the United States Supreme Court in Morrison v Olson, which upheld the constitutionality of the independent counsel system established under the US Ethics in Government Act of 1978. “The United States allowed independent counsel to operate with a degree of separation from the Attorney-General, and the Supreme Court still found it constitutional,” he said, arguing that prosecutorial independence does not automatically violate a country’s constitutional arrangements if it is properly defined by law.
While defending the OSP as an institution, Amidu was critical of the current Special Prosecutor’s conduct, accusing him of refusing to submit closed dockets to the Attorney-General and of operating as though he stands above the Constitution. “The solution is not to weaken the office, but to ensure it is properly used,” he stated, urging Ghanaians interested in the outcome to formally apply to the Supreme Court as interested parties rather than engage in public commentary.
