The dispute is not about whether Ghana should prosecute procurement corruption. It is about whether the office currently doing it was ever given the power to do so on its own.
What is being argued
The Office of the Special Prosecutor was created in 2017 by an act of parliament, with a remit that covers corruption in public procurement. Article 88 of Ghana’s 1992 Constitution vests prosecutorial authority in the Attorney-General. The question the country’s constitutional lawyers have been circling for years is whether ordinary legislation can carve an independent prosecutor out of that article, or whether only a constitutional amendment can. A recent High Court decision on the OSP came down on the side of the constitution, and the Deputy Attorney-General, Dr Justice Srem-Sai, said the ruling reflected what constitutional lawyers had long held.
The line that sharpened it
“I do not know any lawyer who believes that it could create an independent prosecutorial authority without amending Article 88 of the Constitution,” he said on 26 July, adding that “the only way to do what we seek to do is to amend Article 88.” Coming from the deputy head of the office whose powers the OSP was designed to sit outside, that is a pointed intervention — and it is also, on its face, a call for a stronger anti-corruption body rather than a weaker one, since a constitutional amendment would settle the independence that the statute only asserted.
Why procurement people are watching
Ghana’s high-profile procurement investigations run through the OSP. If its prosecutorial authority rests on a statute that cannot bear the weight, then the question is not academic for anyone whose case is currently in that office’s hands, on either side of it. Defence counsel in live matters now have an argument about the forum itself, and public bodies under investigation have a reason to wait. A Supreme Court judgment on the OSP’s prosecutorial powers was expected on 29 July.
The wider pattern
The argument is a specific instance of something that recurs wherever anti-corruption bodies are built quickly: the institution is created by the legislature because that is fast, and the constitutional question is deferred because settling it is slow. It holds until somebody with standing asks the court. What Ghana is having in public this month, several countries have had quietly and some have not had yet.
Whatever the Supreme Court decided, the debate itself is the useful signal. The strength of a procurement oversight body is not measured by its caseload but by how well its authority survives being challenged — and that only becomes visible when somebody challenges it.
Reported from MyJoyOnline, on statements by Deputy Attorney-General Dr Justice Srem-Sai and the High Court decision concerning the Office of the Special Prosecutor, 26 July 2026. The Tender Wire is published by Otnox.
