Features
Legal education and the 499 students
Persuance of education is considered very important at all levels because of the essential role played by education in sharpening the skill of students and making them more productive for the development of various sectors of the economy. The purpose of education is to equip students with relevant knowledge and skills that would help liberate them from ignorance and make it possible for them to address the challenges or obstacles in socioeconomic development. This explains why all over the world, countries place emphasis on developing the educational sector to make it dynamic and productive in terms of output of relevant goods and services in line with improving upon the welfare of people.
DEVELOPMENT OF SKILLS
In Ghana, it is important to encourage the growth of engineering and agricultural students to make it possible for them to help the economy to grow. Apart from this, we also need to encourage other sectors such as transportation, tourism and many other areas to ensure that no sector is left behind. Another area that cannot be forgotten is the health sector because if all sectors of the economy expand while the health sector is weak, people will not be able to get the quality health care they deserve and this would demean that most of the people will remain unhealthy and unproductive for that matter. Every sector in the economy is therefore important and that is why students must be encouraged to take up studies in different areas and blend such different aspect of knowledge for the advancement of society. It is equally important to note that in everything we do we must be regulated by the laws of the land otherwise there will be total choas in society. Choatic situations or disorderliness is not good for society because it doesn’t not help society as a whole to move forward in a common direction towards national development. To be able to move forward in this way we need to ensure that laws are properly enacted to regulate all activities in society. Such laws, once enacted, must be properly interpreted and implemented to guide all actions in society. Laws are therefore very important because they help people to train as lawyers and also make it possible for the law making body or legislature to go about it’s duties in the passage of laws for the country. All such activities cannot take place if lawyers are not properly trained to operate as professionals in our court systems, the legislature and other areas of life. This is what makes legal education very important.
LEGAL EDUCATION
Legal education today has become an important programme for all those who desire to enter the Ghana School of Law for professional training to make them lawyers. Legal education has become an important part of our life because lawyers help us to regulate affairs in society and to carry out our conduct in an acceptable way in line with the laws of the country. It is professional lawyers who help societies to organise their activities in line with accepted principles. Society today is governed by social norms and laws in various aspects of our life. Politically, socially, and economically, it is the implementation of the law that helps to protect the interest of everyone as well as different groups of people pursuing various activities for national development.
LAW AND ORDER
Law and order in society can only be possible if we allow ourselves to be governed soundly and effectively by rules of conduct and laws that have been enacted in the interest of the nation. On the economic front and in the business sector, we are always governed by different laws and principles that help us in the promotion of national economic development as well as business growth
in the interest of all. Similarly, our social behaviour such as obeying traffic rules and so on are also governed by laws in the country. Politically, democracy cannot thrive without making room for laws to govern our behaviour and conduct.
PROFESSIONAL TRAINING
In the light of all this, it is clear that professional training is very necessary for all those who desire to receive it in line with legal education. If enough lawyers are trained for the country, the country will have the peace it desires to go about all duties and operations necessary for our socioeconomic development.
FATE OF THE 499 STUDENTS
Against this background, it is unfortunate that the fate of the 499 students who desire to entire the Ghana School of Law is hanging in the balance through no fault of theirs. At the same time, the Ghana School of Law as well as the Independent Education Council or Body for Legal Education and also the Attorney-general and other stakeholders cannot be blamed for this unfortunate development. As a nation, what could have been done would have been to institute measures in anticipation of the increasing numbers of students fighting for professional education in law. Ghana has done well in producing quality lawyers not only for the country, but for other countries in the world. We therefore need to expand the facilities for legal education in the country so that all qualified candidates can be admitted without unwarranted restrictions or obstacles.
SOD CUTTING
It is very good that President Akuffo Addo has already cut sod for the construction of a new training school for professional legal education to cater for the increasing number of students in the country. However, this cannot
help the situation until the completion of this noble and necessary project. Thus, while waiting for the completion of the project, we all need to be patient so that at the right time, not far away from now, more students can be admitted for legal education. Even though facilities are limited compared to the huge numbers desiring to enter the Ghana School of Law, every effort must be made by the authorities concerned to admit more students than is being done now so as to reduce conflicts and afflictions among any group of people who want to enter the Ghana School of Law. The situation can be managed like this until the new law school for professional training is completed to admit more students than we are doing now.
CONCERN OF PARLIAMENT
Parliament, concerned about the situation, has directed the Ghana School of Law to admit all the 499 students desiring to enter for professional training, without failure. This is good but must be intepretated in the right frame of the law governing professional legal education in the country. Even though Parliament has a supervisory role over the Executive, it cannot exercise the power of directing the Ghana School of Law to admit all the 499 students. This has been explicitly explained by the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and it is expected that the truth of the matter would be taken in good faith no matter the pain and frustration that may go with it. The country has come to the point where many anticipated problems likely to be encountered must be seriously examined and dealt with in order to avoid crisis situations. Ghana must move on in its quest for political, economic and social development but this must not be done in an haphazard manner to disturb the peace and development of the state. Once we all understand it in this way, we will be able to deal with this problem once and for all together with all other challenges that may come our way so as to be able to surmount them and move to a higher level of progress for the good of the country and Africa and the world as a whole.
AVOIDING POLITICS
In the light of all this, we should not play politics with the issue of legal education in Ghana because if we do, the real purpose of finding pragmatic solution to the problem will escape all of us and when this happens it is the country as a whole that will stand to lose it focus in identifying a purposeful solution for the issue. There is no doubt that legal education is very important because in all aspect of life we need lawyers to guide us in what we do so that we will not go wrong. Even if we go wrong the disastrous effect experienced in this case may not be so much. The point being made is that legal education can help us in a dual purpose. First of all it can prevent a situation of going wrong before being corrected to do what is right. Secondly even where we go wrong the lawyers can help us to minimise demanded caused. This explains why we must all collaborate with stakeholders so that more expansive facilities for legal education will be effected to solve the problem once and for all in line with what the current government spearheaded by President Akufo-Addo stands for.
Contact email/whatsApp of author: Pradmat2013@gmail.com (0553318911)
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
