January 28, 2026
SUPREME COURT
GHANA
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The Supreme Court of Ghana considered an application by Matthew Nyindam, the New Patriotic Party’s declared winner of the Kpandai Constituency parliamentary election, to quash the High Court (Tamale) judgment that had annulled his election and ordered a rerun. Nyindam invoked the Court’s supervisory jurisdiction, arguing that Daniel Nsala Wakpal’s election petition was filed outside the strict 21-day window set by section 18 of the Representation of the People Law (PNDCL 284) measured from the Gazette publication. The Court identified the operative Gazette date as 24 December 2024 (Gazette No. 234) and held that the petition filed on 25 January 2025 was out of time, rendering the High Court’s proceedings a nullity. The Court emphasized that jurisdictional timelines are mandatory, cannot be extended, and cannot be cured by consent or participation. A majority of four granted certiorari, quashing the High Court’s judgment; one Justice dissented, citing discretionary fairness and the availability of an appeal.
MAJORITY OPINION
A. INTRODUCTION
The desire to acquire power is truly very natural and common; and men who succeed in doing so are always praised, not blamed.
(The Prince, 1532, ch. III)
However, in a constitutional democracy such as ours, the pursuit of political power is attained through the ballot box and persons who are aggrieved by the outcome or processes may have solace in the court of law. In other words, elections are the constitutional moment when the sovereignty of the people is not only affirmed in language but performed in practice. They are, in reality, the periodic renewal of the social contract in the Hobbesian, Lockean or Rousseauian sense; and because elections are the clearest expression of collective self-government, disputes concerning them are, at their core, disputes about the conditions under which public authority becomes legitimate.
That is why the judicial role in electoral disputes is both delicate and indispensable. It is delicate, because courts must not displace the people as the ultimate authors of political authority; and indispensable, because courts must ensure that the people’s choice is expressed through processes the Constitution recognises as lawful.
On this account, a judge who is privileged to adjudicate on an election petition must exercise an unwavering fidelity to the law and be deaf to the passions of the heart. The Court’s duty must be to protect the broader constitutional idea that the people’s will, when expressed through elections, is entitled to be counted honestly, transparently, and within law.
Our task therefore, is twofold. First, to be faithful to the democratic imperative that electoral outcomes should not be lightly unsettled. Second, to be faithful to the constitutional imperative that no public power, electoral or judicial, is immunised from law. The tension between these imperatives is part of the design of constitutional governance. The Court’s duty is to hold them in principled balance, ensuring that finality does not become injustice, and that correction does not become destabilisation. It is from this perspective that we consider the application before us.
This is an application which invokes the supervisory jurisdiction of the Cour