Be professional – Valerie Sawyerr hits back at Attorney General

A former director of the Ghana National Gas Company Limited, Dr. Valerie Sawyerr, has advised the Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Gloria Akuffo, to serve her lawyers with their response to her application for judicial review instead of “filing and serving their response through the media”.

She said the Attorney General should behave like the professional that she is supposed to be and not like a political apparatchik.

Dr. Sawyerr has filed an application before an Accra High Court seeking among others an order to quash a report of a Cabinet Sub-Committee responsible for the Coordination of Investigations and Forensic Audits. The former board member is also seeking a Declaration by the court that the supposed audit report, published by the Cabinet Sub-Committee accusing her and other former members of the Ghana Gas board of causing financial loss was “in breach of her right to administrative justice and right to a fair hearing”.

In various news reports last Friday, the Attorney General is reported to have described Dr. Sawyerr’s application as frivolous, incompetent and borne out of a lack of appreciation of the law.




Reacting to the media attacks, the former Deputy Chief of Staff who is also a former Senior Policy Adviser to President John Dramani Mahama, said her lawyers are yet to receive a response to their application from the Attorney General, and will not “be quick to rely on media reports to make any comments”.

“It seems clear that they have initiated a media war instead of serving us with a copy of their response. When we receive the copy, we will advise ourselves and subject ourselves to the will of the court”, she added.

According to Dr. Sawyerr, a lawyer by profession, she is surprised that the Attorney General would choose to respond to an application served on her through the media, and not the courts.

“The parts of the response from the AG I have read so far in the media are spurious and clearly too amateur to be coming from someone of her stature. If she really did release this response through the media, that would be shameful of her, both as a professional lawyer and the nation’s Attorney General, one paid with public funds”, she noted.

Dr. Sawyerr has meanwhile refused to comment on the substance of the response in the media reports, insisting she has to read the actual document first.

“I will not follow the disgusting behavior of the Attorney General, if indeed it is her response that has been published in the media”.

The report published by the Cabinet Sub-Committee indicted Dr. Sawyerr and others for causing financial loss and breaching Public Procurement laws, claims the former Board Member says has injured her hard-earned reputation. But in the media response, the Attorney General says no adverse findings were made against Dr. Valerie Sawyerr.

Source: Stan Dogbe