A corporate governance consultant and former legislator is urging the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) to redirect its campaign against the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) from personality attacks toward the legal conflict at the heart of the dispute.
Dr. Kwabena Donkor, who served as Minister for Power and as a Member of Parliament for Ejisu-Juaben, argues that the sustained demand by UTAG for the removal of GTEC Director-General Prof. Ahmed Jinapor Abdulai and his deputy, Prof. Augustine Ocloo, misses the structural problem driving the standoff.
At the centre of the conflict, he says, is a collision between the Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020 (Act 1023), which empowers GTEC to regulate and standardise tertiary education, and the founding statutes of Ghana’s older public universities, which guarantee a high degree of institutional autonomy.
“There is a conflict that has developed out of necessity,” Dr. Donkor said, noting that policymakers now believe university autonomy has been extended too far beyond purely academic matters, and that Act 1023 represents an effort to bring institutions back within a unified regulatory framework.
His criticism of UTAG is sharp. Rather than challenging the legal basis of GTEC’s authority through the courts or pushing for legislative review, the association has concentrated its firepower on the individuals running the commission. Dr. Donkor contends that Prof. Jinapor and Prof. Ocloo are implementing board decisions within their statutory mandate, and that holding them personally responsible for structural conflicts between competing laws weakens UTAG’s credibility as a professional body.
He says an academic association whose members teach law, policy and governance ought to lead with sharper institutional arguments. Reducing the matter to calls for individual removal, he warns, risks turning UTAG into what he describes as a pressure group rather than a body capable of driving serious reform.
The dispute has intensified in recent weeks. UTAG on April 13, 2026, renewed its ultimatum to President John Dramani Mahama, demanding action within 14 days or facing the prospect of industrial action. The Education Minister, Haruna Iddrisu, responded by constituting a three-member committee, chaired by Deputy Minister Clement Apaak, to probe UTAG’s allegations and advise the government.
Dr. Donkor’s intervention points toward a different resolution path, one centred on statutory clarification rather than changes in personnel.
