OccupyGhana, a known social and political non-partisan pressure group, is threatening to drag the Attorney General to Court and court should the Attorney-General & Minister of Justice, Godfred Dame fails to adhere to their demands of Act and the Supreme Court.
OccupyGhana asserted in a letter(published) that “On 30 June 2021, we wrote to you on the above-entitled matter (our ref OG/2021/002), requesting information on whether or not you have complied with section 85(2) of the Public Financial Management Act, 2016 (Act 921), which requires you to submit annual reports to the Finance Minister, Auditor-General and Parliament on actions that you have taken on behalf of the government following the Auditor-General’s annual reports and Parliament’s recommendations.
In that letter, we also reminded you of the decision of the Supreme Court in OCCUPYGHANA v ATTORNEY-GENERAL, that ‘the Attorney-General is hereby ordered to take all necessary steps to enforce the decisions or steps taken by the Auditor-General… to ensure compliance including in some cases criminal prosecutions.”
“It has been almost a year since we delivered the letter to you. You have neither acknowledged receipt of the letter nor provided the information we seek.
We write to repeat our constitutional demand for the information. If you fail or refuse to respond to our demand, we shall commence legal proceedings against you, including filing a petition to the Right to Information Commission,” the group threatened in a reminder letter, dated 7 June, 2022 and copied to four other state institutions.
Read below the full unedited letter from OccupyGhana:
Our Ref: OG/2022/008
7 June 2022
The Attorney-General & Minister of Justice
Office of the Attorney-General & Ministry of Justice
Accra
Attention: Godfred Y Dame, Esq
Dear Sir:
RE: RIGHT TO INFORMATION REQUEST
On 30 June 2021, we wrote to you on the above-entitled matter (our ref OG/2021/002), requesting information on whether or not you have complied with section 85(2) of the Public Financial Management Act, 2016 (Act 921), which requires you to submit annual reports to the Finance Minister, Auditor-General and Parliament on actions that you have taken on behalf of the government following the Auditor-General’s annual reports and Parliament’s recommendations.
In that letter, we also reminded you of the decision of the Supreme Court in OCCUPYGHANA v ATTORNEY-GENERAL, that ‘the Attorney-General is hereby ordered to take all necessary steps to enforce the decisions or steps taken by the Auditor-General… to ensure compliance including in some cases criminal prosecutions.’
We then indicated that as citizens of Ghana, we were interested in ascertaining whether you had satisfied these demands of the Act and the Supreme Court. We therefore requested, in line with article 21(1)(f) of the Constitution and section 18 of the Right to Information Act, 2019 (Act 989), that you provide to us:
(i) a list of all actions that your office has taken since
(a) 2016 when Act 921 was passed, and
(b) 2017 when the Supreme Court decision was made;
(ii) the status of all such actions; and
(ii) copies of
(a) the annual reports that you have submitted in line with section 85(2) of Act 921, and
(b) actions and processes taken pursuant to the Supreme Court decision.
We further indicated that while we would appreciate it if the information was delivered to us in hard copy and/or electronic form, and we were happy to provide the necessary computer drives for the electronic format.
It has been almost a year since we delivered the letter to you. You have neither acknowledged receipt of the letter nor provided the information we seek.
We write to repeat our constitutional demand for the information. If you fail or refuse to respond to our demand, we shall commence legal proceedings against you, including filing a petition to the Right to Information Commission.
Counting on your co-operation on this matter.
Yours in the service of God and Country,
OccupyGhana
cc. Speaker of Parliament
Parliament House
Accra
Minister for Finance
Ministry of Finance
Accra
Auditor-General
Office of the Auditor-General
Accra
The Executive Secretary
Right to Information Commission
Accra
