DR. KWAME AMOAKO TUFFOUR v. THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

BY COURT:

The Plaintiff claims against the Defendant the recovery of the sum of GH¢133,820.00 being salary arrears owed him from October 2004 to April 2008 when he served as the Executive Chairman of the Ghana School Feeding Programme. He also claims damages for wrongful dismissal and interest on the above sums.

The Writ of Summons was served together with a statement of claim. The Defendant filed a statement of defence wherein the material averments in the statement of claim were denied. The Plaintiff filed a reply and at the close of pleadings issues were agreed and adopted for determination at the trial.

It was only the Plaintiff who testified in this case. He did not call any witnesses. The Defendant did not testify at all. The law is that under the Evidence Act 1975 NRCD 323, the burden of producing evidence in any given case was not fixed but shifted from party to party at various stages of the trial depending on the issue(s) asserted and/or denied: See Re Ashalley Botwe Lands; Adjetey Agbosu & Ors Koteley & Ors [2003-2004] SCGLR 420 at 425. Having neglected to avail himself of the opportunity of leading evidence on the allegations made in its defence, I am left with the evaluation and assessment of the evidence led by the Plaintiff alone in this case. The rationale for the principles above is that averments in pleadings do not themselves constitute evidence. Therefore, failure to lead evidence on facts pleaded means an abandonment of those averments.

Furthermore, failure to lead evidence on facts pleaded also amounts to an admission of the claim of the adversary: Enumuo V Din [2002] 25 Weekly Report of Nigeria 93 at page 111 (Court of Appeal). In the Asihenevi Botwe case supra, Brobbey JSC comprehensively stated the law on the situation I am faced with in the following words at pg 364-365:

*“The effect of Sections 11(1) and 14 and similar Sections in the Evidence Decree………may be described as follows: A litigant who is a Defendant in a civil case does not need to prove anything; the Plaintiff who took the Defendant to Court has to prove what he claims he is entitled to from the Defendant. At the same time if the Court has to make a determination of a fact or of an issue and that determination depends on an evaluation of facts and evidence the Defendant must be made to realize that the determination cannot be made on nothing. If the Defendant desires the determination to be made in his favour, then he has the