The Supreme Court has fixed Tuesday, April 21, 2026, to hear arguments from parties in a case in which a Ghanaian citizen is challenging the constitutionality of certain directives of Wesley Girls’ Senior High School.
The plaintiff, Shafic Osman, is arguing that Wesley Girls’ policy, which compels Muslim girls to attend Christian service, while preventing them from practising their religion, was inconsistent with the provisions of the 1992 Constitution.
At the last hearing, the apex court gave the Board of Directors of Wesley Girls’ in Cape Coast, 14 days to respond to allegations made by the plaintiff.
However, the school argued that its board had no capacity to be served with the suit.It said the appropriate party to be served was the Trustees of the Methodist Church, who owned the school’s land and the properties on the land.
Catholic Church
In a related development, the Catholic Church has filed written submissions in a bid to help the court in the determination of the matter.
The amicus curiae, which has the Most Rev. Joseph Afrifa-Agyekum, a member of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference responsible for education, as the deponent, was filed by Thaddeus Sory.
While the plaintiff argued that the Supreme Court’s enforcement arm of its exclusive original jurisdiction had been properly invoked simply because he was bringing the action as a Ghanaian citizen, and in defence of the constitution, the Catholic Church, on the contrary, argued that the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction to entertain the matter.
It added that the proper forum for the enforcement of the rights of Muslim students at Wesley Girls’ was the High Court since enforcement actions must not only be in relation to the plaintiff, but must be filed at the High Court, which also has authority under Article 33 of the 1992 Constitution.
The church further contended that because the plaintiff lacked the capacity to institute the action at the High Court because he was not a direct party to what he was seeking to enforce, he had couched his reliefs in a manner to evade the capacity hurdle at the High Court.
Rights
Again, the church was of the view that faith-based schools by themselves had rights under Article 21 of the 1992 Constitution.
“The suit before the court, therefore, puts the cart before the horse. If the government has not acquired the institution, which is the church’s property, then on what basis can it be insisted that the church’s right as the owner of the property on which the institution is run cannot decide the covenants that must bind persons who voluntarily want to enjoy its property?
“And does the institution have the right to associate?
The question then must progress to the next, which is that if the institution’s founders have decided that their institution should be made up of members who subscribe to Methodism, should a person who knows that the association is underpinned by Methodism voluntarily join it, and then turn around and complain that they were being oppressed by Methodism?”
It added that the schools were not the property of the state.
As a result, the church argued that faith-based schools by themselves were set up and run by church funds and not the state.
As a result, the Catholic Church says that a person may be deemed to have waived his or her rights to their religion of practice after voluntarily choosing to attend a faith- based school.
A-G’s position
The Deputy Attorney-General, Dr Justice Srem-Sai, also argued that Wesley Girls’ was owned by the Methodist Church and not the state, hence had the right to practise its religion in line with the Methodist Christian faith.
He added that the school was entitled to government funding despite its character of religious ownership.
As a result, Dr Srem-Sai was of the view that the state could not take away the religious rights of the school simply because it received government funding.
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh
