Measured against Articles 23 and 296 of the 1992 Constitution, the Ministry’s press statement is difficult to defend. A process meant to resolve allegations of unfair administrative conduct must itself be fair, transparent and free from any reasonable apprehension of bias.
The Ministry of Education’s response to the University Teachers Association of Ghana’s petition over the leadership of the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission is considered, a weak answer to a serious public law complaint.
UTAG’s grievance, as publicly ventilated, was not simply a policy disagreement. It was an allegation of regulatory overreach, coercive administrative conduct, and encroachment on university autonomy and academic freedom, followed by nearly two months of institutional silence after its petition to the President. A complaint framed in those terms called for a response rooted in constitutional discipline, statutory clarity and procedural fairness. What the Ministry offered instead was a brief press statement announcing a three-member committee chaired by the Deputy Minister for Education and including the Board Chairman of GTEC itself.
That is where the legal difficulty begins.
Under Article 23 of the 1992 Constitution, administrative bodies and officials must act fairly, reasonably and in accordance with law. Article 296 goes further: discretionary power must be exercised fairly and candidly and not arbitrarily, capriciously or with bias. Those provisions do not merely govern the original conduct complained of; they also govern the State’s chosen method of investigating that conduct. An inquiry established to examine allegations of maladministration must therefore itself be procedurally fair, structurally neutral and transparently lawful.
The Ministry’s statement does not meet that standard. It discloses no terms of reference, no procedure, no hearing rules, no timelines, no recusal safeguards, no standard for receiving evidence, and no commitment to publish findings. It simply asks the public to trust the process. But constitutionalism does not rest on trust alone. It rests on visible legality.
The gravest defect is the inclusion of the GTEC Board Chairman on the panel. That is an obvious public law problem. The complaint is directed at the leadership and conduct of GTEC, yet a person occupying the governing apex of that same institution, who directed and supervised the Director-General and His Deputy, is asked to sit in inquiry over the matter. Even if no personal wrongdoing is alleged against him, the principle remains elementary: nemo judex in causa sua — no one should be a judge in his own cause. The rule against apparent bias is not concerned only with actual prejudice; it is concerned with whether a fair-minded observer would think the process compromised. On that test, the Ministry’s design is plainly vulnerable.
The statutory setting points in the same direction. The Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020 (Act 1023) establishes GTEC as the regulator of tertiary education and places it under a Board. The same Act reflects Parliament’s hostility to conflicted participation by disqualifying a member with an interest in a matter from taking part in deliberations on it. Even if that provision applies directly to Board proceedings, its policy logic is unmistakable: conflict undermines legitimacy. The Ministry’s committee structure does not honour that policy; it collides with it.
The second defect is opacity about legal authority. The statement does not say whether the committee is constituted under Act 1023, as an executive fact-finding panel, as a ministerial advisory mechanism, or as a preliminary body for presidential action under Article 195. In administrative law, public power must always be sourced. An “investigative committee” charged with making recommendations about named public officers cannot rest on implication and press release alone. The question any fair-minded person would ask is simple: by what authority, for what purpose, and under what safeguards?
That question matters all the more because the Constitution already provides more credible routes for handling complaints of abuse of public power. Article 218 gives the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice power to investigate allegations of injustice, abuse of power, unfair treatment and maladministration by public officers. On the face of UTAG’s complaint, CHRAJ is the natural constitutional forum. Its mandate is not ad hoc but entrenched. Its jurisdiction is not improvised but defined. A referral to CHRAJ would have immediately signalled seriousness, neutrality and fidelity to the architecture of administrative justice.
If the Executive wanted an even higher-legitimacy mechanism, Article 278 offered another path: a Commission of Inquiry. A public inquiry would have had clear constitutional pedigree, greater procedural transparency, coercive powers analogous to those of the High Court, and a reasoned report. For a dispute touching university autonomy, regulatory legality and confidence in public institutions, that route would have carried far greater legitimacy than an internal three-member panel.
Even short of CHRAJ or a formal public inquiry, the Ministry still had better options. It could have appointed an independent chair, such as a retired Justice of the Superior Court, or a former GTEC Board Chair wholly detached from the present dispute, to give the process institutional distance and adjudicative credibility. That would have aligned more closely with the constitutional demand that justice be seen to be done. Instead, the Ministry chose the least visibly independent design available.
There is also a broader constitutional dimension. Article 21 protects freedom of association, including trade union activity, and the broader sphere of academic freedom. UTAG’s petition and public advocacy fall squarely within that protected civic space. When a union complains of regulatory overreach and the State responds through an opaque process partly populated by an insider from the impugned institution, the appearance is not one of neutral redress but of administrative self-vindication.
The man on the street reviewing the matter would likely ask familiar questions. Was the committee lawfully constituted? Is the process fair in appearance and substance? Does the inclusion of the GTEC Board Chairman create apparent bias? Are affected parties guaranteed notice, hearing and representation? Are the consequences of the committee’s recommendations legally defined? On the press statement as issued, none of those questions is satisfactorily answered.
The Ministry’s statement is therefore suspect response. It is a holding response dressed as due process. Its first vice is apparent bias. Its second is statutory and procedural opacity. Its third is institutional mismatch: where the Constitution already provides stronger accountability pathways through CHRAJ or a Commission of Inquiry, the Ministry chose the least independent route.
The law required better. At minimum, the Board Chairman of GTEC should have been excluded. The terms of reference should have been published. The procedure and timetable should have been stated. Representation and hearing rights should have been guaranteed. Publication of the report should have been promised, subject only to lawful redactions. Better still, the matter should have gone to CHRAJ, or to a constitutionally grounded public inquiry chaired by a retired judge.
A complaint about overreach cannot be answered by a process that bears the same marks. In public law, method is substance. And here, the Ministry’s method is the problem.
By: Dr Ekpor Anyimah-Ackah
The writer is a lecturer at the University of Education Winneba.
Contact: 0552508296
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