Former President of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), Sam Okudzeto, has criticised Parliament for passing the Legal Education Bill, 2025, without consulting the Ghana Bar Association, describing the exclusion as strange and unfortunate.
Parliament passed the Bill last week, ending the Ghana School of Law’s monopoly on professional legal education and paving the way for accredited universities to offer professional legal training programmes.
The legislation also establishes a Council for Legal Education and Training to regulate the entire system and oversee the conduct of a new national bar examination.
Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express, Sam Okudzeto expressed strong disappointment that the GBA which the body representing lawyers across the country was completely sidelined during the legislative process.
“I had one complaint in the first place when this bill was proposed, the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) was not involved at all, which I thought was rather strange,” he said.
He argued that a reform of this magnitude required direct input from the professional body.
“One would have thought that this matter should have been referred to the GBA for their input, because they are the members of the profession,” Okudzeto added.
The senior lawyer stressed that the GBA is a truly nationwide organisation, with a council comprising regional presidents and secretaries from all regions of the country.
“And it has a council, which is composed of regional presidents and a secretary from each of the regions who are all members of the council. And therefore you can see that it’s a body that is not Accra or Kumasi matter, it’s nationwide,” he explained.
Okudzeto noted that despite efforts by the Association to engage Parliament, they were not given any opportunity to make inputs.
“And yet nothing was referred to us. I think an application was made to Parliament for us to have an interview with the council, and it was never fulfilled,” he lamented.
He said the GBA only learned about the development after the Bill had already been passed into law.
“We now heard that the law had been passed, so that’s a serious matter,” he stated.
Sam Okudzeto maintained that Parliament has a responsibility to consult relevant professional bodies whenever it is legislating on matters that directly affect a particular profession.
“More so, my view is that when we are talking about a profession, it means that anytime parliament is confronted with an issue relating to a profession, Parliament should get the professional body to be involved,” he emphasised.