Nana Ato Dadzie, a former Chief of Staff, has supported plans to reintroduce Ghana’s Public Tribunal system, saying it could widen public involvement in the administration of justice and complement the country’s formal courts.
Speaking at a forum in Accra last Wednesday, he argued that the proposed system reflected long-standing community methods of resolving disputes, in which family heads and traditional authorities play an important role.
“I’m not surprised that new legislation seeks to reintroduce the Public Tribunal system. I think it makes a lot of sense to have the public involved in the administration of justice,” he said.
Nana Dadzie, a lawyer who served under the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), said the former Public Tribunals operated under the same laws as conventional courts. Their main distinction, he explained, was the participation of people who were not legal professionals in the adjudication process.
He challenged the assumption that justice should be administered exclusively by lawyers, pointing to the many disputes settled outside the formal judicial system by traditional leaders and heads of families.
In his view, Ghana’s justice system should acknowledge those existing arrangements and develop them rather than treating them as separate from formal legal processes.
He also said weaknesses in the previous Public Tribunal system should be dealt with through changes to its structure and operation. The problems associated with the earlier model, he argued, were not sufficient reason to abandon the wider concept.
Nana Dadzie expressed his views during the third edition of “Time with the Politician”, an interactive forum organised by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) Ghana and the Department of Political Science at the University of Ghana (UG).
The event covered issues including public leadership and national development. It was designed to give political science students an opportunity to engage directly with experienced political figures and gain insight into the practical demands of public service.
Presidential term and traditional authorities
The former Chief of Staff also backed the extension of the presidential term from four years to five, saying governments needed additional time to carry out their programmes effectively.
He argued that the existing four-year period was too limited for a government to deliver meaningful national development, particularly because a significant portion of the term was taken up by the process of forming an administration.
“You need at least six months to form a government,” he said.
Nana Dadzie further called for traditional authorities to have a stronger role in maintaining law and order. He highlighted the fight against illegal mining, saying chiefs and landowners were more familiar with their communities and therefore better placed than security personnel to identify and prevent unlawful activities.
“The administration of justice should be spread out. We shouldn’t exclude them,” he said.
Anna Lena Sabroso-Wasserfall, Country Representative of KAS Ghana, encouraged the students attending the forum to make full use of the opportunity by asking thoughtful questions and learning from the political leaders present.
She said the initiative aimed to expose students to real-world experiences of political leadership beyond the classroom and to motivate a new generation of public servants.
