For more than three decades, Ghana has been one of sub-Saharan Africa’s steadiest democracies. Since the 1992 Constitution ushered in the Fourth Republic, one remarkable trait, for which Ghana is highly reputed internationally, is its unsoiled democratic credentials—more specifically, respect for fundamental human rights. One reason why Ghana enjoys this enormous privilege and respect is that for over 32 years, fundamental rights, which form the bedrock of democracy, have been guaranteed by the Constitution, enforced by the courts, and upheld as a necessary ingredient of a free democratic society.
Among the bundle of fundamental rights, the right to free speech has always stood out as the cornerstone of every mature democracy. It forms the basis upon which government is held accountable; the right to franchise is exercised, and arguably, upon which all other rights derive utility. Without it, all other rights, without more, are lifeless. It does not mean that all that is expressed must be pleasant or must be agreeable to the government. Indeed, a fundamental part of such a right is dissent or constructive criticism of government.
That cornerstone is now under strain. Over the past year, Ghana’s police and security agencies have arrested a striking number of citizens for little more than what they said.
In March 2025, Alhassan Abdul Rahaman, an opposition activist, was detained in Tamale over a Facebook post and charged with offensive conduct. Two months later, masked intelligence officers seized Alfred Ababio Kumi from his home in what witnesses called a “Rambo-style” raid. His offense was a petition to the president questioning a committee then investigating the Chief Justice; he was charged with publishing false news. In August, a commentator known as “Sir Obama” was held for nearly five days and re-arrested the moment he was granted bail.
The arrests have continued into 2026. Kwame Baffoe, an opposition figure of the NPP, better known as Abronye DC, was remanded into custody on charges of offensive conduct and publication of false news, freed only after a court set bail at 100,000 cedis. Another man was remanded over Facebook posts said to mock the president. Most alarming was the case of David Essandoh, arrested by armed, masked operatives over a post lamenting the return of “dumsor,” the rolling blackouts that haunt Ghanaian life. For an anxious stretch, no one—not his family, not his lawyers, not his party—could find him, as one security agency after another denied holding him.
A pattern emerges from this catalogue, and it is not flattering. In nearly every case the charge is the same: “publication of false news” or “offensive conduct conducive to a breach of the peace”. In nearly every case the trigger is a social-media post, a radio comment, or a petition: speech, in other words, and political speech at that. And in nearly every case the manner of arrest, predawn, masked, heavily armed, theatrical, bears no proportion to the alleged offence of a citizen typing on Facebook. These offences, drawn from provisions of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29), has its lineage running back to the colonial criminal codes.
The offence of conduct conducive to a breach of the peace had its roots traced to the colonial era Metropolitan Police Act of 1839. Section 54(13) made it an offence for every person who shall use any threatening, abusive, or insulting words or behavior with intent to provoke a breach of the peace, or whereby a breach of the peace may be occasioned. The phrase “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour... with intent to provoke a breach of the peace” is instructive. It was, for all intents and purposes, a tool of urban order, aimed in its own era at what a later parliamentary debate frankly described as any conduct amounting to “hooliganism” including, street nuisance, drunken provocation, and the like. It was carried forward in English law through section 5 of the Public Order Act 1936 and again into section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. Notably, however, the word “insulting" was finally removed from the English provision in 2014 after public pressure.
Ghana, being a British colony, inherited this law from the 24th of July 1874 with the proclamation of the Supreme Court Ordinance, by which all laws in force in England became immediately applicable in the Gold Coast from that date. That aside, the colonial administration enacted the Gold Coast Criminal Code of 1892 with a similar provision on breach of the peace. A careful review, however, of the provision on the breach of the peace, suggests that it was never contemplated as applicable to social media posts or mere criticisms of government actions. At independence, Ghana did not discard this colonial code; it re-enacted it. The Criminal Code, 1960 (Act 29), passed in the First Republic under Nkrumah and later retitled the Criminal Offences Act, reproduced the offence at section 207, under Chapter 3, “Offences Against the Peace,” sitting alongside riot, unlawful assembly, and (at section 208) “publication of false news.”
The modern statutory text at section 207 reads:
“a person who in a public place or at a public meeting uses threatening, abusive or insulting (remember the word insulting has been removed in the English statute as far back as 2014), words or behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace or by which a breach of the peace is likely to be occasioned commits a misdemeanour.”
Section 208 also provides that:
“(1) A person who publishes or reproduces a statement, rumour or report which is likely to cause fear and alarm to the public or to disturb the public peace knowing or having reason to believe that the statement, rumour or report is false commits a misdemeanour.
(2) It is not a defence to a charge under subsection (1) that the person charged did not know or did not have reason to believe that the statement, rumour or report was false, unless it is proved that, prior to the publication, that person took reasonable measures to verify the accuracy of the statement, rumour or report.”
Perhaps, let’s not forget that these laws were passed at a time when a wave of other draconian laws, defiant of the principles of common sense, natural justice, and equity, were being passed. It was during this same period that the Supreme Court, in a shameful manner, failed in its duty to uphold fundamental rights of the citizen by consigning them to the moral conscience of the president in the infamous Re Akoto case. Since then, Ghanaians have resolved never to consign fundamental rights to the moral conscience of the political class, especially given the sheer human rights violations that took place during that era.
This resolve is evident, of course, from the provisions of the 1992 Constitution. Under the Constitution, the right to free speech is firmly entrenched as a fundamental right under Chapter 5 of the Constitution. In particular, one striking feature worth pointing out is that while other fundamental freedoms under Article 21, including the right to freedom of movement are curtailable by a law passed by Parliament, the same restriction is not provided for the right to freedom of speech and expression. In other words, Article 21 is silent on whether the right to free speech is subject to any limitation, and if so, by what measure.
It is true that Article 12(2) of the Constitution insists that fundamental rights are not absolute, but subject to the rights of the land and respect for others’ rights. This provision is frequently invoked as a carte-blanche for the continued existence of provisions such as sections 207 and 208 of Act 29. What is often missing in the discussion is that, even in human right restrictions, the contours are extremely limited or otherwise narrowed by strict requirements. Such limitation must be proportional and of course, designed to serve a legitimate purpose.
Unconventionally, I argue that when one reads Article 21 as a whole, especially given that it has gone ahead to make provision for limiting other fundamental freedoms without mentioning the right to free speech, confirms the special nature of the right. It is almost as if the framers did not intend that the right be limited under any circumstances. The lex specialis principle, while ordinarily applicable between two different statutes, is, by the Zakariah v. Nyimakan case, applicable within the same statute and even the same provision. Accordingly, while article 12(2) provides an omnibus provision on limiting fundamental rights, since article 21 has specifically listed the qualifications applicable to it without including the right to free speech, I argue that the omnibus qualification under article 12 should not be broadly construed as empowering parliament or the executive to limit free speech under every conceivable circumstance.
This analysis leads me to conclude that the manner in which sections 207 and 208 seek to limit this otherwise precious right should be deemed unconstitutional. This argument is not in any way intended to endorse irresponsibility in speech. But even in irresponsible speech, unless such speech is instigating the imminent commission of a crime, in which case, the offence of abetment could be levied, the state should have no business punishing such conducts. In other words, even if a speech is likely unsettling, to the extent that it does not invite or instigate the commission of a crime, it should not form the basis of criminal prosecution.
Accordingly, what sections 207 and 208 seek to do, and the manner of their application over the years, cannot satisfy the basic test for limiting any right: proportionality. Free expression has never meant only inoffensive ideas. It protects speech that offends, shocks or disturbs—a principle as old as the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling in Handyside v. United Kingdom. That is the demand of the pluralism without which no democracy exists. To punish a citizen merely because words gave offence, or might unsettle someone, is to attack the very reason the right exists.
If a person feels injured by a speech, the natural remedy is to resort to the tort of defamation, and not for the state to make use of its apparatus to punish the speaker. The very existence of the threat of punishment has the propensity to constrain speech and free expression. Ideas are as free as air, and it is through speech that the best of ideas is brought to fore, refined, and transformed into great transformative innovations. Any law that purports to punish citizens criminally for social-media commentary that merely offends or criticizes officials sits very uneasily with the right to free speech and is to that extent unconstitutional.
Social media has become the natural medium for citizens to express themselves, and of course, to hold government accountable. While recognizing the damaging effect that negative publication might have on a person’s reputation, there is no requirement that one’s expression must necessarily be true or factually accurate. That is all the more reason for the existence of rights such as privacy guaranteed under Article 18 and the tort of defamation. It is, in this regard, not for the state to decide what one might say, publish, or disseminate. Given this analysis, I do not struggle to reach the conclusion that sections 207 and 208 are plainly unconstitutional. Their continuous invocation by security agencies is patently unwarranted.
But if these laws are continuously being abused, what is the available remedy? The Constitution has provided so many avenues, a few of which I will discuss below. Ghana’s opposition party, however, short of availing itself of these constitutional safeguards, has resorted to some rather unconventional steps.
On May 19, 2026, the New Patriotic Party took its grievances to foreign embassies. In a petition to the Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, Morocco’s ambassador, the party asked the international community to “closely monitor” what it called a deteriorating human-rights situation in the country. Its national organizer accused the government of weaponizing state institutions and reviving a “culture of silence” a generation after Ghana repealed its criminal-libel law.
The instinct is understandable, and the underlying complaints are serious given the manner of arrests in just two-years into the Mahama administration, linked mainly to speech or social media publication. But the chosen route to air these otherwise legitimate grievances, deserves harder scrutiny than the applause it drew. The question is not whether the party’s concerns are legitimate. It is whether inviting foreign missions to “monitor” Ghana’s internal affairs is consistent with the sovereignty the party claims to defend.
Article 2(7) of the U.N. Charter bars intervention in matters “essentially within the domestic jurisdiction” of a state, and the International Court of Justice, in Nicaragua v. United States, confirmed non-intervention as customary law. True, the rule forbids coercion, not commentary; a diplomat who observes a trial or speaks up for press freedom is not “intervening” in the strict legal sense. But the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations is equally clear that missions must respect domestic law and not interfere in internal affairs of sovereign states. It is not obvious what “monitoring” the opposition expects, but anything that shades into interference, or that invites others to question Ghana’s sovereignty, crosses a line the opposition should not want to draw.
More than that: to route a domestic grievance through foreign chancelleries, before exhausting the institutions built precisely to handle it, is to announce that those institutions cannot be trusted. That is a remarkable confession from a party that, in government until recently, was their steward.
None of this means the grievances should be waved away. If citizens are being jailed for protected speech, that is grave, and the proper venues are close at hand. The courts remain the constitutional forum for testing every one of these arrests. The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice exists to investigate abuses of state power. Parliament, where the opposition holds a substantial bloc, is a stage for oversight. The press, whose freedom is the very thing at stake, remains the most powerful monitor of all, as do the bar association and civil society, with a credibility no embassy can match.
International engagement has its place, but as reinforcement, not a substitute. Ghana’s democratic reputation was not built by appeals to outsiders. It was built by Ghanaians who insisted that power answer to law, that speech stay free, and that quarrels be settled in the open, by the institutions of the republic. The way to defend that inheritance is to use those institutions with confidence—and to strike from the books the colonial offenses being turned against the very speech the Constitution was written to protect. Sovereignty is not the right to be left alone with one’s abuses. It is the capacity of a people to govern themselves justly.
The opposition warns of a returning “culture of silence.” It is right to. But silence is not broken by whispering to ambassadors. It is broken in open court, on the floor of Parliament, on the front pages of newspapers, in the Ghanaian institutions built precisely so that no citizen need look abroad to be heard. To use them is to prove they still work. To bypass them is to concede they do not. A democracy that jails its citizens for a Facebook post has a problem. A democracy that then asks foreigners to fix it has two.