About two weeks ago, footages from CNN of youth from Sub-saharan Africa being sold at slave markets in Libya went viral, attracting International criticism.

The heartbreaking images also showed some migrants being tortured to death by individuals in Libyan military wears.

There has been a wave of condemnations across Africa, especially due to the silence of the continent’s leaders and groups like the AU and ECOWAS over the incident.

Speaking on Citi FM’s News analysis and current affairs  programme, The Big Issue, Rainer Akumperigya said,  it was essential for an external body,  such as the UN , to establish the facts and ensure sanctions against individuals and entities behind the inhumane act.

“The UN might have to investigate this, set up a commission, because in the absence of the organized system within Libya, we might have to resort international laws, but the fact must be known first”he said.

The Libyan government is reported to have said it did not have an organized system to investigate the issue.

“When the facts started emerging, I read one of the reactions from a media house in Libya, trying to whitewash it and to say that this was a cooked up story and that CNN had faked it,” he said.

The Lawyer thus believes if an external investigative body is involved, it will be able to investigate properly to clear our conscience as to whether this was an attack based on ethnicity or race.

“If we have an external investigative body establish the facts and know the extent to which the crime has been committed, we may be looking at ethnic profiling here. If you look at the video and the pictures, it was basically black Africans, so was this a more target race issue”? he asked.

127 Ghanaians repatriated 

Some 127 Ghanaians were last week rescued from Libya after reports that these Ghanaians and some other black Africans were reported to have been subjected to inhumane treatment after giving away their life’s earnings and making torturous journeys through the Sahara hoping to make it big in Europe.

Group petitions AU to investigate ‘slave trade’ in Libya

In a related development, a civil society group known as “The Future Group,” has petitioned the African Union (AU), to investigate reports of a supposed modern day slave trade in Libya.

The group said the reports are “heart wrecking” and are “very serious crimes against humanity” hence AU must take up the issue.

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By: Farida Yusif/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Although he said the Supreme Court’s judgment does not nullify the case, according to the lawyer, the High Court should have been the right place for the case to be litigated because the reliefs sought by the plaintiff did not bother directly on “constitutional matters.”

The Supreme Court on Thursday declared as unconstitutional the requirement by the General Legal Council asking applicants to the Ghana Law School to undertake an examination and subsequent interview before admission.

[contextly_sidebar id=”TVuYwp6XExA3YcOdP53rLBuxBs87YxtB”]According to the court, in a case brought before it by Professor Kwaku Asare, a United States-based Ghanaian lawyer, in 2015, the requirements were in violation of the Legislative Instrument 1296 which gives direction for the mode of admission.

But speaking on Citi FM’s news analysis programme, The Big Issue on Saturday, Lawyer Akumperigya explained that the Supreme Court assumed what he described as a “doubtful jurisdiction” of the case and should have thus relinquished judgment to the high court.

“This is one of the matters the High Court could have assumed proper jurisdiction because to me it borders on administrative law and the use of discretionary power. The High Court is empowered under Article 33 to determine this issue. My view is that the High Court could have assumed proper jurisdiction on this matter and dealt with it,” he added.

“What the Supreme Court did borders on the concept of what we call judicial review so matters of constitutionality, its interpretation and enforcement lies within the remit of the Supreme Court which is why the supreme law of the land confers it with original jurisdiction. So anytime the Supreme Court is exercising its original jurisdiction on matters of constitutionalism, whether it relates to enforcement or interpretation, then they must be matters that flow directly from the constitution itself and not ancillary to it. It’s a general principle of law that if a higher court has jurisdiction on a matter and the lower court also has jurisdiction on the same matter, the higher court should be relinquished for the lower court because obviously matters that are determined at the lower court will eventually will could eventually end up at the higher court,” he added.

Prof. Asare who took the matter to the Supreme Court challenged the legality of the modes of admission used by the Ghana School of Law and argued that the number of people who were admitted into the school was woefully small considering the number of people who possessed LLB from the various universities in the country.

The Ghana Law School has been criticized for being overly rigid considering that it serves 12 schools providing LLB degrees.

The current training regime limits the intake into the Ghana Law School to under 500 of the about 2000 LLB students who graduate annually.

But the Justices in delivering their judgment, also indicated that their order should not take retrospective effect, but should be implemented in six months, when admissions for the 2018 academic year begins.

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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin

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