Akufo-Addo assures Rwanda-trained Ghanaian lawyers
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo, has assured Rwanda-trained Ghanaian lawyers that he will be their personal advocate in their endeavour to be admitted by the Ghana School of Law.
President Akufo-Addo, who was in Rwanda on the invitation President Paul Kagame to attend the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), pledged to help the Ghanaian lawyers based in Rwanda to further their education at the Ghana School of Law, having been turned down after some attempts.
In his response to a plea by one of the trainees to intervene on their behalf following a petition submitted to the office of the President to enable them pursue their Post-Call Law Programme, President Akufo-Addo who was addressing the Ghanaian community at the Century Park Hotel in Kigali, said “I cannot speak for the Law School or for the General Legal Council but certainly I will be your advocate”.
President Akufo-Addo's assurance attracted a loud applause from the euphoria-engulfed Ghanaian trainees which brought a high level of relief to them.
Some of them have already applied for the Post-Call Law Programme at the Ghana School of Law which commences on October 15.
The Director of Legal Education is said to have informed some Rwanda trained applicants that the General Legal Council was yet to decide on their admissibility since they were the first batch of Ghanaians to train in Rwanda.
However, Graphic Online has gathered that the Ghana School of Law has since sent out invitations to some Ghanaian trainees currently in The Gambia on the acceptance to allow admit them.
Background
A group of Ghanaian qualified lawyers who had their professional training at the Institute of Legal Practice and Development (I.L.P.D) in Rwanda wrote a petition to the President of the Republic of Ghana to enable them to pursue their Post-Call Law Programme.
Prior to the petition which was submitted on the August 9, they had sent a petition to the office of the Chief Justice of the Ghana, Justice Sophia A.B Akuffo, following a disclosure by the Director of the Ghana Law School, Henry Kwasi Prempeh, during an interaction with some law students at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) on May 15, that law degree holders who had gone to Rwanda to pursue further studies will not be admitted to the Post-Call Law Course because Rwanda was a civil law practicing country.
The group found it prudent to write a petition to the Chief Justice who is the chairperson of the General Legal Council to inform them of Rwanda’s legal system which is a hybrid one; that is a fusion of the common and civil law legal traditions.