The Dean of the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA) Law School, Professor Kofi Abotsi says during his childhood, he had no contact or strong form of relationship with his biological mother for 11 years.

According to the academician, this was because of the unfavourable relationship that existed between his father and mother.

However, he noted that the narrative changed when he was due for his secondary-level education. To his surprise, the call for him to establish a relationship with his mother was pushed by his father.

“My father and mother were not together so I lived with my father. I grew up with my stepmother who from all practical perspectives was actually my mother.

“I had a relationship with my mother. At age 4, I came to live with my father. My mother and I didn't have a relationship for 11 straight years, the period I lived with my father. So when I was 15, I reestablished a relationship with her and that contact has remained to date.

“In fact, he promoted the idea. When I was due for secondary school, my father indicated that he wasn't ready and willing to pay my fees so my mother had to come in. That is how my mother came into the picture and so it was his blessing,” he stated.

Speaking to Lexis Bill on Personality Profile on Thursday, he stated that he found it difficult accepting his father had no resources to support his tuition. However, reminiscing, he admitted the struggles faced by his father may have been true.

“Well, he indicated he wasn't able to. I didn't believe that. He may have been speaking some facts because he had then been on retirement  from the Ghana Police Service so he was surviving on pension.”

Professor Kofi Abotsi, touching on the relationship he had with his dad, stated that it was not one of the best as he suffered some form of physical abuse.

According to him, this form of lifestyle did not come as a surprise since his father was a police officer by profession.

Although he admitted that this intense upbringing was meted out to all his siblings, he held the view that the disciplinary actions he faced were quite extreme.

“I didn’t have a particularly best of relationship with my father. I think in retrospect, my late father had very hard handles in terms of the upbringing of his children. My late father was a police officer and so probably makes some sense and so in many ways, I would actually say that there were certain traces of abuse.

“I am trying to be quite careful in this respect because I do think probably in his mind it wasn’t abused, back in the days let’s be honest the upbringing of children particularly from the standpoint of parents, they were quite physical in character and so there was a sense of which these were treated as a discipline but if you look at things of old in the context of today you will probably be unfair to judge them.

“But I think in my particular situation it was hard even by the standards of those days, my situation was beyond a little hard,” he said.

On the other hand, Professor Kofi Abotsi also took the blame for some of the disciplinary actions he faced due to some acts of stubbornness.

“I certainly had my own excesses. I'm sure there were things I did like being asked to go fetch water and disappearing to go play football and coming back home and looking dirty.

“I think I did things that would have warranted a certain degree of parental punishment so I do not dispute the fact that there were justifications and necessities,” he added.