FixTheCountry’s Barker-Vormawor Questions The Relevance of Ghana Bar Association

• Fiery social activist, Oliver Barker-Vormawor, has descended on the Ghana Bar Association, claiming it has failed on its mandate to society
• The Cambridge-Africa PhD law student has described the bar association in Ghana as useless
• The FixTheCountry convener has called for the amendment of the constitution of the Ghana Bar Association to make it a leading social activist tool

Private legal practitioner and lead convener of the #FixTheCountry Movement, Oliver Barker-Vormawor, described the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) as a useless body.

In a lengthy Facebook post, the lawyer said that the GBA has failed to champion any major social cause, unlike bar associations in The Gambia and Nigeria.

“I wondered then why the Ghana Bar Association didn’t come out to issue a statement willing to offer pro bono representation to any journalist who felt under attack or had been attacked. Just show solidarity and making people see the Bar as a partner in democratic reforms,” he posted on Facebook on July 21, 2022.

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The Cambridge-Africa PhD law student said this thought struck him after a conversation with the President of the Gambian Bar Association, whom he said was putting systems in place to support social causes and become a partner activist.

In Nigeria, he revealed that the Bar Association was part of all coalitions and provided pro bono representation to social activists. The Nigerian Bar Association was also a leader in mobilising civil society against social injustices.

“Then I thought about how 34 of some of the most known CSOs came together to create Webecitizens, in order to press for democratic accountability. Who was absent? The Ghana Bar Association,” he lamented.

According to him, nobody even noticed they were not part of the coalition.

The Ghanaian lawyer recounted more instances where the GBA has failed to live up to its mandate:

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“I remembered how we, as the #FixTheCountry legal team, led this online petition calling on the Bar Association to do better in standing up for the defence and upholding of Freedom and Justice. It was widely covered.

“Under pressure from our petition, they finally came to issue some wishy-washy statement about the Techiman killings one year later. At some point, I wondered why they didn’t even apologise from the 1948 riots,” he mocked.

He said the GBA announced no calls for action, didn’t commit to doing anything and “naturally went back to sleep”.

“You see how they are quiet even with leakages of exams at the Ghana School of Law, or even in the ridiculous and immortal protocol admissions Maxwell Opoku Agyeman did at the School? They are only waiting for Francis-Xavier Sosu to criticise the Judges; so they can descend on him,” he fired.

He said it was time for the Ghana Bar Constitution to be amended to kick out the enablers of our broken politics.

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“Time to make the Ghana Bar Association, the leading activist body at the service of Democracy, Rule of Law and Dissent,” he signed off.

Atta Mills was killed by Sinus Infection - Family

Meanwhile, in a separate story, YEN.com.gh reported that the family of Ghana's late former president John Evans Atta Mills has crushed conspiracy theories about the statesman's death, disclosing that he was killed by Sinus Infection.

The former president's younger brother, Samuel Atta Mills, said the medical problem started around 2005 but worsened with time.

"He had to go for chemotherapy; he had to go for radiotherapy, and it was all those complications, those were all part of it," he told Joy News in an interview.

Source: YEN.com.gh