The General Assembly of the University of Ghana Students’ Representative Council has unanimously voted to suspend its Speaker Rt. Hon. Emmanuel Kwaku Ampem Adjei over alleged incidents of misconduct and breach of parliamentary procedure.

The vote, essentially a “vote of no confidence”, was made during the first sitting of the House to immediately relieve the Speaker from his duties as the chairperson of the General Assembly through.

The General Assembly was acting on a motion raised by the Hon. John Acquah of the Mensah Sarbah Hall, to suspend the Speaker through a vote of no confidence.

“The Speaker is not a member of the house in reality, he’s only a facilitator of the House and until a member presents a motions for a recess and get seconded, the Speaker has no right deciding that the House should recess nor to walk out. His action was disrespectful and a contempt to the General Assembly,” he said.

The motion was necessitated by an attempt by the Speaker who walked out in the middle of a discussion after calling the House into recess without entertaining a related motion from the members of the House, as is the standard Parliamentary practice.



Some members in red arm and headbands in protest of the conduct of the speaker

In an exclusive interview with #UniversNews, John Acquah emphasized that the SRC constitution explicitly defines the role of the Speaker to act as a moderator of the proceedings of the House, and as such, does not fall within the mandate of the Speaker to ‘force’ the House to proceed on recess without adequately hearing from members of the House.

According to him, the actions of the Speaker were unconstitutional and in contempt of the House.

The suspension of the Speaker means that the Deputy Speaker of the House, Rt. Hon. John Populampo shall assume the duties of the substantive speaker.

Speaker’s Response

Meanwhile, the now-suspended Speaker, Rt. Hon. Emmanuel Kwaku Ampem says that he walked out of the Sitting to secure his safety.

Suspended Speaker, Rt. Hon. Emmanuel Kwaku Ampem Adjei

He said that he felt attacked when some members of the House violently approached him and threatened to attack him.

“I didn’t walk out because I felt like breaching the law. Every member of the House would witness to the fact that I was under attack. I had to move out to secure my safety,” he argued.