The President of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has criticised former Chief Justice Gertrude Torkornoo following her removal from office, stressing that her conduct amounted to offences that would carry prison terms elsewhere.
His remarks came in the wake of President John Dramani Mahama’s September 1, 2025, decision to dismiss Justice Torkornoo, acting on the recommendation of an Article 146 Committee.
A five-member committee was established as Article 146 requires, chaired by Justice Gabriel Scott Pwamang.
The committee found her guilty of financial misconduct after it emerged that she had charged the Judicial Service for private trips in 2023, including travel to Tanzania with her husband and to the United States with her daughter.
Under Article 146 of the 1992 Constitution, the removal of a Chief Justice is one of the most solemn and consequential procedures imaginable. It begins with petitions submitted to the President. In this case, three petitions were lodged.
The President, by law, was required to determine whether they disclosed a prima facie case.
The report flagged the payment of per diem allowances to family members as “a reckless dissipation of public funds” and “unjustifiable in law or policy.”
Speaking on Channel One TV on Saturday, September 6, 2025, Franklin Cudjoe rejected claims that the former Chief Justice relied on finance officers to justify her decisions.
He said “Listening to all the arguments, I found out that they also relied on the fact that she got herself an imprest, which actually she was not supposed to spend… The argument that she should have been guided by a finance officer, because she didn’t know, is neither here nor there.”
He further described the expenditures as an “unwarranted imprest” and urged Ghanaians to resist politicising the matter.
“Let’s dissociate politics from this. It gets me angry when I hear of it. She was the head of the judiciary; she knows the law. In other countries, she would have been in jail by now,” he insisted.
