The Supreme Court has quashed the contempt of court order issued by the Bolgatanga High Court against the Baare Chief, Naab Nyakora Mantii, and Richard Sunday Yinbil (Secretary to the Paramount Chief of the Talensi Traditional Area) over an alleged attempt to influence the presiding judge of the Bolgatanga High Court, Justice Alexander Graham, following a request by the Paramount Chief of the Talensi Traditional Area to invite the judge to the palace to discuss issues of mutual benefit on March 10, 2023.
The two, Baare Chief Naab Nyakora Mantii and Richard Sunday Yinbil, Secretary to the Paramount Chief of the Talensi Traditional Area, were immediately arrested on the orders of the presiding judge, brought before an open court, and charged with contempt of court.
On July 7, 2026, the Supreme Court in Accra quashed the contempt of court order against Baare Chief Naab Nyakora Mantii and Richard Sunday Yinbil after their lawyers filed an application seeking the Supreme Court’s intervention to quash the order to protect the reputations of the Chief of Baare, the Secretary to the Paramount Chief of the Talensi Traditional Area, and the Paramount Chief.
Following the unanimous decision of the five-member panel of Supreme Court judges to quash the contempt order against the Chief of Baare and the Secretary to the Paramount Chief of the Talensi Traditional Area, their lawyers addressed the media at the forecourt of the Supreme Court in Accra, explaining the outcome of the case and the significance of the ruling for their clients.
“So March 10, 2023, the paramount chief asked that they inform the judge (Justice Alexander Graham) to come over to the palace for them to have a discussion of mutual benefits. Unfortunately, the judge misinterpreted the harmless invitation, and concluded that the chief and all have come apparently to influence him on a court decision, in a case that was pending before him,” Bennette Nakaar said.
“Because of the genuine ignorance of that law, they just decided to let things go. So, unfortunately, when the chief took steps to travel outside, this time it came up again, and we thought there was a need to designate that the status of the issue was as of the law. So, today’s application was simply seeking the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction to quash the order of the contempt from 2023, and we made the argument that the judge was not clothed with the jurisdiction to even entertain it from the beginning,” he added.
Bennette Nakaar continued: “It is alien to the legal procedure as we know in terms of contempt. So, these are the arguments we made, and the court has upheld our arguments and has quashed that order of March 10, 2023.”
A1 Radio | 101.1 MHz | Moses Apiah | Bolgatanga
