Justice Gertrude Torkornoo (L) says Justice Gabriel Pwamang shouldn’t be part of removal committee
Suspended Chief Justice, Justice Gertrude Torkornoo, did not hold back in lambasting her colleague judge, Justice Gabriel Pwamang, who is chairing the five-member committee, hearing the three petitions for her removal, during her address to Ghanaians on Wednesday, June 25, 2025.
Justice Torkornoo expressed her disappointment with Justice Pwamang’s decision to accept President John Dramani Mahama’s appointment to chair the committee.
She listed a number of reasons which, according to her, disqualify Justice Pwamang from sitting on the committee hearing the petitions against her.
One of the reasons she gave was that Pwamang sat on a case of one of the petitioners, Daniel Ofori, together with her and ruled in the petitioner’s favour.
“In the year 2020, I wrote a dissenting opinion in one of Mr Ofori’s cases in the Supreme Court. He won that application because my dissenting opinion was the minority opinion of three judges. The other four judges supported his application. After that, his lawyers applied that I should not sit on his cases again because I had presided over a different case involving him in the High Court, which he lost. Since then, I have not sat on any matter involving him.
“What is also disturbing about the current Article 146 proceedings is the fact that the cases in the High Court that Mr Ofori complains about emanate from a judgment of the Supreme Court written by Justice Pwamang in Daniel Ofori’s favour. How can Justice Pwamang, who gave judgment in favour of Daniel Ofori, as part of a panel of the Supreme Court, and whose opinion I dissented with, making me a target of Mr Ofori’s anger, preside over processes to remove me as Chief Justice, ostensibly for complaints Mr Ofori has?” she queried.
Justice Torkornoo also said that Justice Pwamang is disqualified from being part of the committee because another petitioner, Ayamga Akolgo, has listed him (Pwamang) as a witness in his petition.
“Mr Akolgo also claims that when he applied for a copy of the day’s proceedings, which were signed by all the judges that presided on his case, he did not see a record that he had been arrested, so I should be removed as Chief Justice. What is also significant about this petition is that Justice Pwamang sat with me as one of the judges who heard Mr Akolgo’s case and was named as a witness that Mr Akolgo will call, making him ineligible to preside over the petition. But His Excellency the President has appointed him to chair and inquire into this petition, and he has accepted to do so,” she said.
In light of the above argument, the embattled Justice Torkornoo has strongly criticised the appointment of Justice Pwamang as chairman of the committee probing the petitions seeking her removal from office.
BAI/VPO
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