Take A Date (your file cannot be located at the Newly Completed Court Complex)!
Imhotep Alhassan, Accra

October 16, 2015

The new law courts complex in Accra is trending – trending with madness!

Just take a date and go see for yourself.

It’s the latest place in Ghana to get mad, worked up and fume at our mediocrity.

The architecturally imposing newly completed court complex is situated behind the Cocoa Affairs Court, near the end of the John Evans Atta-Mills High Street, about three blocks away from the Independence Square, Accra.

I’m not sure of the name of the building because what I saw is different from what the Lady Chief Justice promised. Back in 2012, in a tribute she had promised to name the then uncompleted building after the late President Mills for releasing the funds for its construction.

There is one pedestrian entrance through the front gate. Then you walk through the car park with no designated walkway to the main building.

There are ten steps to the porch way as if to remind us of the Laws of Moses.

The porch way has three pillars on either side. Then we all go through one checkpoint to enter the building. Attorneys are directed to use some other entrance.

The bags go through the scanner but our bodies are not searched for any knives or pistols. Our smart phones are not taken.

One wonders what it’s all about.
And why one single file when there are several doors?

“So why do we have only one line,” some "too-known" guy behind me burst out.”

I turned and smiled, glad that I’m not the mad man this time.

You enter the building and it’s Makola all over again. Learned men, erudite scholars, celebrated lawyers, celebrities all thrown into a “low intensity riot”- everybody asking everyone and anyone else who cares to listen, for directions on how to proceed.

Meanwhile, there is a screen displaying all the cases so presumably that explains why there aren’t designated assistants giving directions.

You stare at the screens for a minute or so and all it displays are cases to be heard in March 2015. Yes March 2015!

But, the building was inaugurated in October 2015! Gotcha!

I move through another entrance and see another screen listing the offices on the ground floor. But that’s all it does.

Then it flips and displays a Ghanaian TV presenter welcoming you to the new premises, but there’s no sound nor subtitles.

I mentioned my case to nobody in particular and a helpful attorney standing nearby, suggested I try out the third floor. I get there and thankfully I see the label showing exactly which category of case I’m looking for.

But the label (paper pasted on the glass), directs me to the first floor.

Now, the elevator can carry at most five persons with much squeezing so I just have to gallop down the stairs. I get to the first floor and there are a few persons who are as confused as I am.

Looking at their faces, I can’t ask them anything. So I walk round the whole perimeter of the building.

Thankfully, the place is swarming with private sanitation officers but no judicial service staff to give directions. These sanitation staff are also standing in groups of two or three trying to solve their own problems.

So I choose to go anti-clockwise and I end up meeting someone I had met earlier along the same corridor over and over again also going clockwise.

Obviously, he is as confused as I am.

Finally, I enter the right court room, mention the case to the clerk who then directs me to the fourth floor.

Other persons who are fed up have simply taken seats enjoying the ambience, not that their cases will be called.

No cases are being called; everyone is "taking a date." Did you just say Ghanaian lawyers love taking a date?

You’re right.

So finally, I use the elevator at the back of the building which also collects a maximum of five persons but has fewer persons using it.

I find my court room eventually after another round of going round, this time clockwise.

There is a busy court clerk from a former court in the Supreme Court building now handling cases from three other courts; the reasons not too difficult to fathom - judges have been suspended, court clerks have been suspended.

So here is this court clerk in this new building handling other jurisdictions and he has been under-supplied with the files.

The best he can do is to ask you: “Senior counsel would you like to take a date?"

After a long back and forth you have to take a date because your file cannot be located.

And if it is located? “My Lord is not prepared to sit today” because he or she is mad about the whole process. And the judge is also not properly briefed on the category of cases which have now been added to his or her workload!

Then there is the usual dose of common etiquette. And plenty of mannerisms too- you know, Ghanaian style.

You can tour the whole of Ghana in that building, in one visit.

One attorney addressed me, “My brother isn’t this madness.” Why has the Chief justice transferred the files? Is this what will stop corruption?”

I said nothing.

I had decided to be a good guy for the day. He addressed those around me, “Isn’t this simple management? Why all this confusion?”

They too said nothing.

“What is she trying to do standing at the corridor inspecting the check-in process?”, he charged again.

I wished I had seen that for myself. He went on and on and then left the court room. One attorney told his colleague: “For the past four days I’ve not been able to locate a single file let alone take a date.”

As I waited to be sorted out, a newly-assigned court registrar came in carrying two bundles of files in his arms, heaving a sigh of relief: “Aah, I found these ones.”

The excitement on the registrar's face as he explained to the court clerk was enough compensation for the work he had done.

Meanwhile to the left were two lady clerks sitting behind a desk with two new computers. They had not had instructions to tear the plastic material and boot the computers.

“Until the computers are installed, no cases can commence,” the clerk explained to me as I lobbied him to take an early date.

My clerk told me in all honesty that my file will get lost because my case has not even been partly heard.

“My Lord” will therefore request that my file is assigned to another judge. This is because he is now handling additional cases from other jurisdictions.

The winners are those who are losing their cases and have advised their clients not to show up and even take a date.

These are looking forward to a happy 2016 with lost files!

It’s all trending now, so take a date.

IMHOTEP ALHASSAN
ACCRA
OCT 16, 2015.