The parliamentary opposition in Ghana has condemned the 20‐year jail sentence handed to prominent ruling‐party figure Bernard Antwi‐Boasiako – known as Chairman Wontumi – describing the High Court judgment as a “miscarriage of justice” that threatens confidence in the country’s legal system.
In a strongly worded statement, the Parliamentary Minority Caucus said it would use “every lawful and constitutional means” to challenge the conviction of the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and Akonta Mining Limited, who were found guilty on two counts each under Ghana’s Minerals and Mining Act.
The conviction was delivered in Accra by High Court judge Justice Audrey Kocuvie‐Tay.
While stressing that they were not defending illegal mining – widely blamed for devastating rivers and forests – the opposition MPs warned that the manner in which state power had been used in this case risked undermining the rule of law and deepening perceptions of selective justice.
They also signalled that, in their view, “Chairman Wontumi is a POLITICAL PRISONER!!!”.
Minority questions fairness of trial
Central to the Minority’s critique is the claim that Mr Antwi‐Boasiako was effectively denied his constitutional right to be represented by a lawyer of his choice at the delivery of judgment.
They say his lead counsel had notified the court in advance of a prior professional engagement outside Ghana, yet the court proceeded regardless – a step they argue clashes with Article 19 of the 1992 Constitution, which protects the right of an accused person “to be defended by a lawyer of his own choice”.
“The right to counsel of choice is not a courtesy extended at a court’s convenience. It is a constitutional guarantee that may only be displaced in the most exceptional circumstances,” the statement said.
The Minority likened the current case to the controversial prosecution of former state energy boss Tsatsu Tsikata in the 2000s – a case the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) long highlighted as emblematic of judicial overreach and unfair trial.
They recalled that in November 2016 the Court of Appeal overturned Mr Tsikata’s conviction, holding that the trial judge’s handling of the proceedings – including delivering judgment while an issue headed for the Supreme Court was unresolved – had caused a “miscarriage of justice”.
“If that was a miscarriage of justice in 2016, the same standard cannot simply evaporate in 2026 because the accused now wears a different party’s colours,” the Minority said, urging Wontumi’s lawyers to raise the issue squarely before the Court of Appeal.
Clash over Supreme Court’s constitutional role
The opposition also launched a direct constitutional challenge to the way Justice Kocuvie‐Tay handled arguments that part of the mining law conflicts with fair‐trial guarantees.
Defence lawyers had asked the High Court to refer questions about Section 99(2)(b) of the Minerals and Mining Act and Article 19(11) of the Constitution to the Supreme Court under Article 130 – which gives the apex court exclusive authority over constitutional interpretation.
Instead, the judge relied on earlier case law to hold that the statute was “clear and unambiguous” and did not offend the Constitution, and declined to make a referral.
To the Minority, that step itself amounted to an unlawful assumption of the Supreme Court’s powers.
“A trial court that decides a constitutional question in order to justify not referring it runs the risk of substituting its own interpretive judgment for that of the only body the Constitution empowers to give a final and binding interpretation,” they argued.
They cited the Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Republic v. The High Court, General Jurisdiction 6, Accra; Ex Parte Dr. Zenator A. Rawlings, in which the apex court quashed a High Court ruling because the trial judge had failed to refer a live constitutional question and had instead interpreted the Constitution personally.
“On this authority, we say plainly, and without hesitation, that Justice Kocuvie-Tay’s refusal to refer the constitutional questions … amounts to precisely the wrongful assumption of jurisdiction that our Supreme Court corrected by certiorari in the Zanetor case,” the Minority said.
They argued that convicting and sentencing a citizen to 20 years’ imprisonment while retaining a question reserved for the Supreme Court rendered the entire judgment vulnerable to being set aside on appeal or by an application for certiorari.
Accusations of selective justice
Beyond the courtroom arguments, the opposition framed the case as part of a wider pattern in which, they allege, the machinery of law enforcement is turned most aggressively against government critics and opposition figures.
“It is a foundational principle of constitutional democracy … that the coercive machinery of the State must never be wielded as a partisan weapon,” the statement said, invoking Article 17’s guarantee of equal protection before the law.
The Minority contrasted the speed and severity of the Wontumi prosecution with what they described as sluggish or non‐existent action in other alleged illegal mining cases involving members of the governing side.
They pointed to:
– A 15 July 2025 directive by Attorney‐General Dr Dominic Akuritinga Ayine instructing the Economic and Organised Crime Office to investigate NDC National Organiser Joseph Yamin and National Vice Chairman Yakubu Abanga over illegal mining allegations, saying there had been no public update on charges or trial dates.
– A case reported by journalists involving the MP for Prestea Huni Valley, who, in a letter dated 28 March 2025 to the Electricity Company of Ghana, allegedly acknowledged supervising a mining site at Apinto on National Security instructions after a licensed concession belonging to RMG Mining Limited was taken over and reportedly turned into an illegal “galamsey” site. No prosecutions had yet followed, the Minority noted.
– The November 2025 arraignment of the MP for Asutifi North over an alleged obstruction of an anti‐galamsey task force, in which the MP was granted bail of GH₵150,000 with reporting conditions – “a markedly different trajectory from the twenty-year custodial sentence handed down in this case,” they said.
“Taken together… this pattern is more than sufficient to sustain the reasonable perception that the machinery of prosecution moves fastest, and lands hardest, when it is pointed at the political opposition,” the statement argued.
Rule‐of‐law and democratic concerns
The Minority insisted they were not attacking Justice Kocuvie‐Tay personally, and reaffirmed their respect for judicial independence under Articles 125 and 127 of the Constitution.
“To criticise a judgment on its legal reasoning is not to attack the judiciary; it is to participate in the very culture of legal accountability that a mature democracy requires,” they said.
But they warned that if lower courts continue to decline referrals of constitutional questions “whenever they are personally persuaded of their own correctness”, the referral mechanism in Article 130 would become “accessible in theory, illusory in practice”.
This, they argued, could lead to inconsistent constitutional interpretations, erode public confidence, and provide a template for future prosecutions of any political persuasion to be insulated from Supreme Court scrutiny.
“A democracy survives on the confidence of the losing side that the rules of the game are fair,” the statement said. “When the leadership of a political party, any party, perceives that prosecutorial and judicial processes are being deployed with an uneven hand against it, the damage is not confined to that party.”
Calls for transparency and next steps
The Minority Caucus issued a series of specific demands:
– The Attorney‐General’s Office should publish its enforcement record on illegal mining “across the political spectrum”, including the status of the Yamin/Abanga probe and the Apinto concession case.
– The Court of Appeal should rigorously examine any grounds of appeal relating to denial of counsel of choice and the refusal to refer the Article 19(11) issue to the Supreme Court, guided by existing precedents.
– The judiciary should issue guidance reaffirming the “modest threshold” for constitutional referrals so that lower courts do not “inadvertently narrow citizens’ access to the Supreme Court”.
They also urged “all Ghanaians, regardless of party”, to insist that the legal standard applied to one mining concession or political actor be applied to all – and that “the standard which cleared Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata’s name in 2016 … be demanded, with equal conviction, today.”
To Wontumi’s family and supporters, the statement, signed by Minority Leader Alexander Kwamina Afenyo‐Markin, offered solidarity and a promise of continued political support.
“The Minority Caucus will continue to monitor this matter, including any appeal, and will pursue every lawful and constitutional avenue available to us to see that justice is done and that the defects that have robbed this judgment of its legitimacy are addressed, fully, transparently and without fear,” it concluded.
