The dramatic acquittal of Nigeria’s former Petroleum Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, by the Southwark Crown Court in London, offers a profound, timely lecture for our own anti-graft crusade here in Ghana. After more than a decade of international investigation by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), a jury required less than forty-eight hours to return unanimous not-guilty verdicts. The taxpayer is left with a massive bill, and the state with a collapsed flagship case.

Diezani told the BBC the 13-year investigation by the NCA "could have been handled a lot differently" and that it was "painful and traumatic". She said: "I've not been allowed to travel. I've not been allowed to work. They destroyed my reputation and my integrity."

The lesson is stark: in the theater of criminal justice, the distance between absolute prosecutorial conviction and the high threshold of legal proof is often vast.

The constitutional mandate of innocence

Under Article 19(2)(c) of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, we have firmly affirmed the global best-practice jurisprudence that a person charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until he is proven or has pleaded guilty. This is not a technical loophole; it is the cornerstone of due process, started in the Garden of Eden.

Investigators are expected - indeed, required - to pursue their targets with a ruthless efficiency, but only within the strict boundaries that due process allows. Suspects and accused persons are not trophies; they are citizens clothed with constitutional rights that must be respected from the moment of arrest to the final verdict.

Atta Akyea is right

Only yesterday, June 22, 2026, after proceedings in the trial of the former National Signals Bureau Director‑General, Atta Akyea captured the essence of criminal justice in a single line: “You don’t imprison a man based on theory.”

That declaration is more than courtroom flourish; it is a constitutional reminder. EOCO investigator Frank Marshall Cromwell’s assertion, that Kwabena Adu‑Boahene presented a fraudulent invoice and that only GH¢9.5 million reached the Israeli supplier despite the accused’s insistence that the full GH¢49.1 million was transferred, will not be accepted as gospel by the court. It must pass through the crucible of cross‑examination, tested against documentary evidence, and survive the adversarial fire before the court may strip a citizen of his liberty.

The presumption of innocence enshrined in our Constitution demands that freedom yields only to fact established beyond reasonable doubt. To imprison on theory is to betray due process; to insist on proof is to honour justice.

The danger of the court of public opinion

This requires patience from all of us, the public. We must resist the temptation to hurry investigators or to clamour for premature arraignments merely to feed the appetite of media spectacle. The Constitution, speaking literally, knows not any such monster called OSP or ORAL whose accusations alone must secure conviction in criminal prosecutions. When high-profile corruption investigations are conducted under the whip of public impatience, shortcuts are taken, evidence is contaminated, and cases collapse.

Furthermore, while pre-charge press conferences can be a useful tool in the broader fight against public graft, they must never degenerate into media trials. State prosecutors must always acknowledge the presumption of innocence in their public rhetoric, no matter how ironclad they believe their docket to be. Suspects must be treated with dignity. Bail, for instance, is a constitutional right to ensure attendance at trial; it must never be weaponized as a pre-trial punishment.

To argue blindly that the UK justice system simply "failed" to hold Alison-Madueke accountable is most unfair. It ignores the rigorous reality of the law. This is regardless of the potential of any form of influence, especially with judiciaries that suffer persistent perception of corruption or questionable independence.

The heavy burden of proof

In criminal jurisprudence, suspicion, no matter how dense or morally compelling, is entirely impotent. Sections 11(2) and 13(1) of our Evidence Act, 1975 (NRCD 323) explicitly commands that:

"In a criminal action, the burden of producing evidence, when it is on the prosecution as to a fact which is essential to the guilt, requires the prosecution to produce sufficient evidence so that on the totality of the evidence a reasonable mind could find the existence of the fact beyond a reasonable doubt."

"In a civil or criminal action, the burden of persuasion as to the commission by a party of a crime which is directly in issue requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt."

This high threshold has been robustly defended by a long line of judicial authority. As our superior courts have consistently held including in The Republic v. Court of Appeal; Ex parte Tsatsu Tsikata [2005-2006] that criminal standard requires the prosecution to establish every ingredient of the offence to a degree of certainty that excludes any reasonable hypothesis of innocence.

If the evidence falls short, the court must acquit. To borrow the timeless, famous phrase of the Supreme Court of Ghana in The State v. Ali Kassena [1962] that a multitude of suspicions put together cannot constitute proof.

Justice Holroyd as far back as 1823 in Re Hobson observed that “The greater the crime the stronger is the proof required for the purpose of conviction.”

The duty to submit to due process

But there is a flip side to this coin. Because the Constitution shields you with the presumption of innocence, it imposes a reciprocal civic duty: you must submit yourself to the law. If you are quick to tell the public you have done no wrong, you must be equally swift in making yourself available to law enforcement.

It is within this legal context that former Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, and his aide, Ernest Akore, must recognize their path forward. They must be quick to submit themselves to the ongoing processes, cooperate fully, and retain the finest legal minds. The goal of the defence in our system is not necessarily to prove innocence, but to test the state's case so robustly that they raise a scintilla of doubt. And by the unyielding dictate of our law, any reasonable doubt must inure to the benefit of the accused. It is within this legal context that the Opposition must reframe from the rush to cry witch-hunt and doing so in language that damages broadly and reinforces perceptions of a judiciary easily manipulated by a governing party.

Conclusion

As multiple former public officials stand trial in our own courts today, let us guard against prejudice. Regardless of what we think we know about the facts from the headlines, let us uphold our constitutional requirement. We must presume them innocent until they have either pleaded guilty or been found guilty after a full, fair trial.

That is the rule of law. That is the enduring lesson from London.