High Court orders reinstatement of Prof. Avoke and four Principal Officers

The Winneba High Court presided over by Justice Aboagye Tandoh has ordered the Governing Council of the University of Education Winneba (UEW) to reinstate Professor Mawuto Avoke as the Vice-chancellor of the University.

The court further ordered that four other principal officers, who were also dismissed, be reinstated to their former positions and their salary arrears paid from the date they were unlawfully removed from their offices.

The four principal officers are Dr. Theophilus Arkolie, Daniel Tetteh, Mary Dzimey and Frank Owusu Boateng who were interdicted by the university with regard to some vital documents that went missing, among others, while investigations were on-going.

The court in July 2017, ordered Prof. Avoke and the four Principal Officers to step aside until the case brought against them was finally determined.

Later, Prof Avoke took the case to the Supreme Court, which quashed the decision by the Winneba High court that the five should step aside until the final determination of the case.

But the then Governing Council failed to reinstate them as ordered by thevSupreme Court until the substantive case pending before the High Court was finally brought to an end on Wednesday, February 2, 2022.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency at the premises of the court, some members of the public expressed the hope that the decision by the court would bring to an end, the five-year legal battle that had bedeviled the administration of the university.

It will be recalled that one Supi kofi Kwayera, a leader of one of the Asafo groups and an opinion leader in Effutu, in 2017, challenged the Governing Council of the University that its term expired in 2013 and insisted that Prof. Avoke and the then finance officer were executing their duties illegally.

He further argued that the then Minister of Education failed to constitute a new council and went ahead to allow the defunct council to continue to operate.

He took the matter to the Winneba High Court presided over by Mr Justice George Ato Mills-Graves who ordered Prof. Avoke and other four principal officers to step aside.

Source: GNA