A constitutional challenge that many expected to fade quietly is now reshaping Ghana’s anti-corruption landscape in ways few anticipated. The case of Adamtey v. Attorney-General, registered as Suit No. J1/3/2026 before the Supreme Court, has taken a dramatic turn: the state’s own chief legal officer is now arguing, in substance, that Parliament acted unconstitutionally when it created the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP).
On December 12, 2025, Noah Ephraem Tetteh Adamtey, a private citizen and legal practitioner, invoked the exclusive original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, seeking a declaration that the OSP’s exercise of prosecutorial powers is unconstitutional. In response, the Attorney-General filed a motion on April 8, 2026, seeking an extension of time to submit a formal statement of case. In that draft statement, the Attorney-General argues that Article 88(3) of the 1992 Constitution vests prosecutorial powers solely in that office, and that Parliament acted unconstitutionally by passing the OSP Act, 2017 (Act 959), which compels the Attorney-General to delegate part of those powers to the OSP.
The constitutional provision at the centre of the dispute is unambiguous in its language. Article 88(3) states that the Attorney-General shall be responsible for the initiation and conduct of all prosecutions of criminal cases. The word “all” is doing significant legal work, and it is precisely that word the Attorney-General now deploys to argue that Parliament overstepped its authority.
The Attorney-General’s position rests on several interlocking arguments. While the Constitution allows the Attorney-General to delegate prosecutorial authority, that delegation can only extend to individuals, not to an institution acting independently. By enacting Act 959, Parliament effectively transferred constitutional power to a separate body without formally amending the Constitution, which the Attorney-General contends is beyond Parliament’s remit under ordinary legislation.
What makes the case remarkable is not the constitutional question alone, but who is making the argument. The Attorney-General is named as the defendant in this suit. Yet in its filings, the office has largely aligned with the plaintiff’s core position. In his draft statement of case, the Attorney-General argues that Parliament acted in excess of its powers when it passed Act 959, and is praying the Supreme Court to make declarations that the independent prosecutorial provisions of the Act are unconstitutional. The practical effect is a state that appears to be arguing against one of its own institutions.
The case has been further complicated by a significant procedural ruling. On January 27, 2026, the Supreme Court dismissed an application by the OSP to join the constitutional lawsuit as a party, a move that would have allowed the agency to directly defend its own mandate. The Attorney-General successfully opposed that request, arguing that the OSP was not a necessary party to the proceedings.
That ruling drew sharp criticism from prominent voices in Ghana’s legal and governance community. Professor H. Kwasi Prempeh, Executive Director of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), argued that excluding the OSP from defending the suit risks prioritising procedural form over substantive justice, describing the OSP as the real party in interest in a case that directly determines the scope of its powers.
The OSP was created in 2017, receiving presidential assent in January 2018, as a deliberate institutional response to a structural problem that had long undermined Ghana’s fight against corruption. The concern, widely acknowledged even in the memorandum to Act 959, was that concentrating prosecutorial power in the Attorney-General, a presidential appointee removable by the President, created an inherent conflict of interest in cases where the political establishment might itself be implicated. The OSP was designed to insulate anti-corruption prosecutions from precisely that vulnerability.
If the Supreme Court endorses the Attorney-General’s position, the practical consequences would be far-reaching: every prosecution initiated by the Special Prosecutor would require prior written authorisation from the Attorney-General, effectively subjecting the OSP’s operational decisions to executive oversight and dismantling the institutional independence that was its founding rationale.
Defenders of the current statutory design argue that this is exactly what the OSP was created to prevent. They contend that an anti-corruption office that requires the Attorney-General’s fiat before each prosecution is, in practical terms, not independent at all. Whether Parliament had the constitutional authority to create such independence without a formal constitutional amendment is the precise question the Supreme Court must now answer.
The case is poised to become one of the most consequential constitutional rulings on institutional design in Ghana’s recent history. Its outcome will determine not only the future of the OSP as currently constituted, but will also define the limits of Parliament’s legislative power to construct accountability institutions within the existing constitutional architecture.
