According to Mr Ayariga, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) leader was only encouraging party lawyers and not denigrating the judiciary.

“He was encouraging them to develop an interest in serving on the bench because there are a lot of NDC lawyers who do not explore the interest even when the opportunity is there.

“So Mahama was only admonishing them to express interest so they can be appointed when the need arises. So what is wrong if the NDC lawyer is asked to express interest?” he queried on Adom FM Dwaso Nsem.

Addressing the NDC Lawyers Conference over the weekend, Mr Mahama accused President Nana Akufo-Addo of appointing members of his party to the bench to influence decisions in their favour.

He therefore charged some of the NDC lawyers to prepare themselves to take up positions on the bench to balance its composition.

His comment has, however, been met with wide condemnation, with the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) describing it as ill-informed.

But the lawmaker said GBA’s reaction is not surprising since none of the topical issues in the country has caught their attention.

Mahama Ayariga cited how the GBA has been silent on the bank of Ghana issue to support his claim.

Mr Ayariga insisted that, nothing stops a judge from being a member of a political party, adding it is the output and the quality of their jobs that matter.

“There is nobody who will go to law school and say he is not aligned to any party. Definitely, you will be aligned but if you are openly biased and your arguments don’t support you work, then that becomes a problem,” he noted.

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Mr. Mahama made the accusation while addressing the closing ceremony of the 3rd Annual Lawyers Conference of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Saturday, September 2.

Mr. Kwakye Ofosu, who was speaking on Citi FM, said the NPP has a long-standing history of deliberately staffing state institutions in order to have its way in most issues in the country.

“It has been a long-standing strategy of the NPP to dominate state institutions so that they can have their way on any matter they deem fit so they go about staffing state institutions with NPP people. It started in the Kufuor era but he used more subtle means, but as for President Akufo-Addo, he has adopted the crudest fashion to do this, and you recall what he did with the Electoral Commission when he came into office and removed Charlotte Osei on trumped-up charges and promptly appointed someone we know to be NPP and when we thought that he was going to end there, he appointed one Appiah Hene who is an NPP person as a commissioner,” Mr. Ofosu stated.

Mr. Kwakye Ofosu cited a number of appointments made by President Akufo-Addo as evidence of this cronyism, including the appointment of Justice Solomon Twumasi, a former Dormaa East constituency chairman of the NPP, as a High Court judge.

“If you look at the judiciary, President Akufo-Addo has decided that at all costs, the NPP must have overwhelming dominance in the judiciary set up, so he has appointed over eleven Supreme Court judges in the last seven years and he has appointed close to one hundred High Court judges and if you come to scrutinise these appointments, you will find people who are openly NPP so it is not as if president Mahama did not know what he was saying.

“If you go to the High Court today, the NPP’s former Dormaa East constituency chairman is called Justice Solomon Twumasi and he is now a High Court judge appointed by President Akufo-Addo. There is Justice Eric Ansah Ankomah who is currently at the Tamale High Court and a known NPP person so there is no other evidence you will need to show that the judiciary has been heavily politicised.”

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