The University of Ghana has described as incompetent a suit filed against it over alleged irregularities in the composition of a Search Committee for the selection of a new Vice-Chancellor.
The University also says that the suit against it, filed by one Patrick Justice Kojo Ennin, is frivolous and vexatious.
In view of that, they have filed an application at the Accra High Court to dismiss it.
Patrick Ennin, in his suit filed in May 2021, faulted the University for including some persons in a committee it set up for the selection of a new Vice-Chancellor.
He is praying the court to declare that the Committee was “unlawfully constituted in breach of prevailing law by the inclusion of Mrs Vesta A. Nunoo and Prof. Baffuor Agyeman-Duah”
He alleges that the two, who were representative of the University Council on the Committee, have had their tenure as members of Council expired prior to their nomination.
But the University, responding to the suit, says that the plaintiff failed to exhaust the internal dispute resolution mechanism established under the University of Ghana Act, 2010 (Act 806).
The school maintains that this move by Mr. Ennin amounts to a blatant disregard for the clear requirement of the law establishing the University.
The University holds the viewpoint that the action which has been commenced against it “discloses no cause of action and/or is, in any case, an abuse of the process of the Court-Ord 11 r 18 of CI 47.”
A motion sighted Univers News described the assertion leveled against the University as “unfounded in the law establishing and regulating the school or its Statutes.”
The University also says that the “instant action is incompetent having been commenced by a writ instead of an application for judicial review”
“In any case, the application is frivolous and vexatious,” the University adds.
The University said that its statutes “requires simply that the said Search Committee ought to comprise of three members nominated by the University Council, not that the nominated persons must of necessity be members of the Council.”
It continued that Mr. Ennin “has no reasonable chance of success on the face of his pleadings, as his interpretation of the law governing the composition of the Search Committee under law is erroneous.