The Minority Caucus in Parliament has described Bernard Antwi-Boasiako, the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), popularly known as Chairman Wontumi, as a “political prisoner” and announced plans to mount a legal and political challenge against his conviction.
The Caucus alleges that Wontumi’s right to a fair trial was breached after judgment was delivered in the absence of his lead counsel and the trial court declined to refer constitutional questions raised in the case to the Supreme Court.
In a strongly worded statement dated July 20, 2026, and signed by Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin, the Caucus reacted to the High Court’s decision convicting Chairman Wontumi and his company, Akonta Mining Limited, on two counts each under the Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703), as amended.
Justice Audrey Kocuvie-Tay sentenced Wontumi to 20 years’ imprisonment on each of the two counts, with the sentences to run concurrently. The Minority began its statement by expressing solidarity with Wontumi’s family and the NPP, describing the sentence as a burden carried by “a household and a family name.”
It, however, maintained that its concerns were institutional and not personal, stressing that it continues to hold the judiciary “in the highest constitutional regard.”
Denial of counsel of choice
The Caucus’s central legal grievance is that judgment was delivered in the absence of Wontumi’s lead counsel, whose office had reportedly notified the court in advance of a prior professional engagement outside the jurisdiction.
The Minority argued that this raises grave concerns under Article 19(2)(g) of the Constitution, which guarantees every accused person the right to counsel of their own choosing, a right it described as “not a courtesy extended at a court’s convenience” but a constitutional guarantee displaceable only in exceptional circumstances. The statement drew a direct and pointed parallel to the trial of former Ghana National Petroleum Corporation boss Tsatsu Tsikata, whose 2003 conviction was, for years, cited by the NDC establishment as the defining symbol of judicial overreach on an accused person’s right to a fair defence.
The Court of Appeal ultimately acquitted and discharged Tsikata in November 2016, ruling that the trial judge’s conduct, including delivering judgment while a related constitutional question remained unresolved, had occasioned a miscarriage of justice, a defect the appellate court said not even a presidential pardon could cure. “If the right to counsel of choice mattered in 2003, it matters in 2026,” the Minority said, “and it matters exactly as much when the accused sits on the other side of the political aisle.”
Refusal to refer constitutional questions
The Caucus’s second major challenge concerns Justice Kocuvie-Tay’s refusal to refer constitutional questions raised by Wontumi’s defence to the Supreme Court under Article 130. The Minority argued the threshold for referral is a modest one, and that by ruling for herself that Section 99(2)(b) of Act 703 was “clear and unambiguous,” the trial judge assumed a jurisdiction the Constitution reserves exclusively for the apex court.
It cited the Supreme Court’s own 2016 ruling in Republic v The High Court, General Jurisdiction 6, Accra; Ex Parte Dr Zanetor A. Rawlings, in which the apex court quashed a High Court ruling on the express ground that the trial court had wrongfully assumed jurisdiction to interpret a constitutional provision.
“This is not a mere irregularity to be absorbed into the general run of the trial,” the statement said, describing the resulting judgment as resting on “a jurisdictional defect capable of vitiating the entire proceeding.”
Allegations of selective justice
The statement’s sharpest political charge was a direct comparison between the pace of Wontumi’s prosecution and the treatment of figures aligned with the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC).
The Minority noted that on July 15, 2025, the Attorney-General had formally directed the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) to investigate Joseph Yamin, the NDC’s National Organiser, and Yakubu Abanga, its National Vice Chairman, over illegal mining allegations. Yet, a year on, no charges, arraignment or trial date have followed.
The Caucus also cited reports concerning the Member of Parliament for Prestea Huni Valley, who it said had personally acknowledged, in a letter to the Electricity Company of Ghana, overseeing a mining site at Apinto following the reported takeover of a licensed concession from its lawful owners, RMG Mining Limited. No prosecution has followed that matter either, the statement noted, despite reports that the original concession holders remain unable to access their own site.
By contrast, the Minority pointed to the case of the MP for Asutifi North, arraigned in November 2025 over an alleged obstruction of an anti-galamsey task force, who it said was promptly granted bail of GH¢150,000 with reporting conditions, a markedly different trajectory, it argued, from the 20-year custodial sentence handed to Wontumi.
“Taken together,” the statement read, “a stalled investigation into the ruling party’s own national officers, an unprosecuted takeover of a licensed concession implicating a sitting government MP, and the markedly different pace of state action in each instance… is more than sufficient to sustain the reasonable perception that the machinery of prosecution moves fastest, and lands hardest, when it is pointed at the political opposition.”
Demands and way forward
The Minority issued four specific calls: that the Attorney-General publish its enforcement record on illegal mining across the political spectrum, including the status of the Yamin/Abanga investigation and the Apinto concession matter; that the Court of Appeal give full consideration to any appeal grounds concerning denial of counsel of choice and the refusal to refer constitutional questions; that the Judiciary reaffirm the threshold for constitutional referral under Article 130; and that all Ghanaians demand the same standard applied to clear Tsatsu Tsikata’s name in 2016 be applied “with equal conviction” today.
The Caucus was careful to state that its position is not a defence of illegal mining. “The Minority supports the vigorous prosecution of illegal mining, a scourge that has degraded our rivers, poisoned our water bodies and endangered the livelihoods of generations yet unborn,” the statement said, adding that it seeks no immunity for anyone on the basis of political affiliation.
It closed, however, with its most direct and unambiguous declaration: “Chairman Wontumi is a POLITICAL PRISONER!!!” The Minority pledged to continue monitoring the matter, including any appeal, and to pursue “every lawful and constitutional avenue available” to ensure what it called the defects that have “robbed this judgment of its legitimacy” are addressed “fully, transparently and without fear.”
Source: Abigail Arthur
