Private Legal Practitioner, Lawyer Delanyo Alifo believes Ghanaian legislators and persons in charge of policy direction on education and the country’s general policy direction are conformists, and argues such behavior will not help the nation and its youth.
His comments come on the back of a demonstration embarked on by 499 students and sympathizers after they were refused admission into the Ghana School of Law regardless of having passed the entrance exam.
The Ghana School of Law is the only institution mandated to train lawyers in the country. With over 17 faculties in various institutions offering LLB courses, the competition for limited space in the School of Law is high. This results in very few people gaining admission to be trained as lawyers and students believe it is time this monopoly is ended.
Speaking to Samuel Eshun on the Fact Sheet show aired on e.TV Ghana, Lawyer Delanyo Alifo stated, “I must say that I am excited about how things are going now. I anticipated a long time ago that it will come to this time where students and the youth will begin to agitate seriously because the people who have been in charge of the nation, and are making regulations about education and general policy direction have been too conservative or too old or something.
So I know that changes have to come and for those changes to come soon enough, there would have to be some agitation by the youth. So I like the fact that when students took to the streets to demonstrate and began to make noise, somebody listened.”
Regarding the high rate of rejection into the Ghana School of Law as having existed for a long time, he believes the actions of the students have now forced legislators to pay attention to the situation. “I am really glad especially now that the private member bill is being introduced in parliament. I didn’t like how the situation has been managed until now and I like the momentum we are seeing now. I know we are going to achieve something.”
South Dayi MP, Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor and the Madina MP, Francis-Xavier Sosu have written to Parliament to direct the Legislative drafting department to put together a Private Members Bill to amend the Legal Professions Act, 1960, Act 32.
The bill will among other things seek to amend Act 32, to exclude the Chief Justice as well as other Justices of the Supreme Court from the General Legal Council (GLC) and redefine Its functions.
In a memo to the Clerk of Parliament, the MPs stated that it has become important to review the policy direction of the Ghana School of Law under the administration of the General Legal Council due to recent reports of mass failure in the School’s Entrance Examination and the public outcry it engendered.