Former Attorney-General and Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu has issued a second public challenge to the High Court ruling that stripped the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) of its prosecutorial powers, this time raising serious procedural questions about how Justice John Eugene Nyante Nyadu came to deliver a 23-page ruling on April 15, 2026, in proceedings he had previously adjourned indefinitely.
In a paper dated April 28, 2026, Amidu scrutinises the sequence of events that led to the substantive quo warranto ruling, questioning the legal basis on which the court reconvened on April 15 after it had on March 9 adjourned the case sine die, meaning without a fixed return date, to await a related Supreme Court decision.
Amidu draws attention to what he describes as an irreconcilable contradiction. Justice Nyadu acknowledged in his own ruling that he had stayed proceedings to avoid delivering a decision that might conflict with a pending Supreme Court case. Yet on April 15, the same court not only reconvened without any apparent formal order directing it to do so, but delivered a fully written 23-page ruling immediately after hearing a brief oral application from the applicant’s lawyer.
“A court that adjourns the hearing of a case sine die cannot reconvene out of the blue and create a situation where an already written substantive ruling is delivered by the judge the same day,” Amidu wrote.
He quotes Justice Nyadu’s own explanation for reversing the adjournment: “Upon reflection and upon listening to the submission of counsel for the applicant, I am of the opinion that this court can go ahead and deliver its ruling and so I do so accordingly.” Amidu argues that personal reflection does not constitute the High Court Civil Procedure Rules, 2004 (C.I. 47), and that no established legal procedure permitted the judge to simply overrule his own sine die adjournment in that manner.
Amidu also questions whether the court issued any formal hearing notices directing the parties to appear on April 15, or whether the applicant’s lawyer unilaterally prompted the sitting. He argues the public is entitled to a transparent answer because the circumstances surrounding the reconvening raise questions about whether the substantive ruling was prepared in advance and delivered as though conjured on the spot.
Crucially, Amidu notes that on the same day in a connected matter before the High Court (Criminal Division 1), Justice Ruby Aryeetey dismissed an application for stay of proceedings and instead adjourned the criminal trial to await the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Noah Ephraim Tetteh Adamtey versus the Attorney-General, which directly addresses the constitutionality of the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act, 2017 (Act 959). He argues this contrast in judicial conduct on the same day in closely related matters is telling.
This is Amidu’s second public intervention on the OSP ruling. In an earlier paper dated April 22, he argued the ruling was void from the outset because the originating application filed by private citizen Peter Archibold Hyde lacked the jurisdictional foundation required under Order 55 of the Civil Procedure Rules, and that the High Court had no authority to interpret constitutional provisions, a power reserved exclusively for the Supreme Court.
The OSP has separately stated it is taking steps to challenge the ruling. The case of Adamtey versus the Attorney-General, which will directly determine the constitutionality of the OSP’s prosecutorial mandate, remains pending before the Supreme Court.
