The crowd swelled with energy beneath Accra’s scorching sun as thousands chanted against corruption, injustice, and the soaring cost of living, voicing their fury at a regime they accused of thievery, graft, and indifference to the public’s needs. The protest was dubbed Occupy Julorbi House—a biting play on Jubilee House, the seat of power. The word Julorbi(“child of a thief” in the Ga language) implied that the occupants of the House were plundering the nation’s wealth. “Ghana is practising kleptocracy,” “The buck stops with the president,” “Our leaders aren’t patriotic,” and “We need an independent judiciary” were among the placards’ loud demands.
Within the crowd were three legal minds: Oliver Barker-Vormawor, convenor of civil society initiatives #Fixthecountry and Democracy Hub; Martin Kpebu, a lawyer passionate about human and environmental issues; and Elorm Ababio, a young law student whose outspoken nature kept delaying her admission to the Bar.
It was September 2023.
Fixing the country
Oliver Barker-Vomarwor, who had then just finished as a doctoral law student at the University of Cambridge in the UK, arrived back home in Ghana in February 2022 to deliver, at the invitation of several European embassies, a speech on state violence and the deterioration of the rule of law in Ghana. An acerbic critic of the government on social media, his #FixTheCountry movement had already gained traction as a social media campaign.
But as soon as he had arrived at Accra’s airport, he had been arrested and taken to a small room by armed men who, for more than three hours, slapped, punched, kicked, stepped on, and spat on him. Afterwards, they had blindfolded him and taken him out in police and military vehicles to an unknown cell outside Accra, where the assault continued. Strip-searched and forced to give the officers access to his phone, he had then been forced into another vehicle again, now convinced that he was not going to survive. However, after his lawyers released a statement that he had arrived in Ghana and then disappeared, he was first ‘found’, then freed. His detention had lasted 34 days.
The harassment did not stop then. By May 2022, he had been arrested three times and sued three times by the Ghana Police Service and even the Electoral Commission for his activism, calling out fraud and mismanagement. But instead of his protests petering out, the arrests solidified the #FixTheCountry movement and led to frequent campaigns urging systemic reforms to address Ghana’s economic and governance challenges.
The protesters were accused of plotting a coup d'état
“One of my initial shocks when I started mobilising for #FixTheCountry was how the government framed the activities of protestors,” he recollects. “The messaging was often deliberately calibrated to suggest that what we are doing was to promote a coup d’état.” He went on to mock that framing by government functionaries, often referring to his ‘coup attempts’. The satire was not appreciated by the authorities, though: one of the charges levelled against him in that period was for a ‘treason felony.’
His continuous persecution drew international attention, raising concerns about freedom of speech and the rule of law in Ghana. In October 2023, the International Senior Lawyers Project, an independent non-profit made up of 2,000 experienced lawyers, produced a brief demanding that Ghanaian authorities drop the charges against him. When the government did not budge, the case became a focal point for the movement, underscoring the broader struggle for justice and accountability in the country.
Occupy
As the civic movement grew, the time became ripe for the #OccupyJulorbiHouse protests in September 2023. Fifty participants, including journalists, were rounded up by the police during the three days that the protests lasted. The following year, another protest Barker-Vormawor led—against often politically connected and highly polluting illegal mining—caused the arrests of 53 protesters, including himself.
“My advocacy created discomfort with the state”
Seriously ill after having been detained on that occasion, the courts refused him bail—an act of retaliation that civil society organisations roundly condemned, along with the other arrests. But as soon as he was free again, Barker-Vormawor, now a partner at an Accra law firm that prioritises pro bono cases, prepared to sue the government on behalf of six civil society organisations over a new, infamous mining law called LI2462. LI2462, formally meant to regulate mining, had instead triggered a rush for leases by government insiders, in several cases targeting environmentally vulnerable areas(1). The case against LI2462 is pending in court.
“My advocacy creates discomfort with the state. #Fixthecountry cannot just be an NGO that organises a workshop,” Barker-Vormawor says, highlighting traditional CSO practices that have been ineffective in bringing change. “Protest is part of democratic tools, and we are using that.”
Leaving an established firm
At the Julorbi House protests, Barker-Vormawor had rubbed shoulders with a fellow legal mind: Martin Kpebu, whose earlier work on bail facilitation for detainees had already helped free activists from detention. In 2020, Kpebu had also led a legal challenge by communities to stop the government from mining bauxite in the ecologically sensitive Atewa Forest.
In contrast to Barker-Vormawor, however, Martin Kpebu had not started out as a firebrand activist. But, as part of a sage, established Accra law firm, he had often felt that lawyers were not doing enough to challenge social ills and bad governance. “We were complaining, and we saw challenges, and nobody was fixing them. We talked as lawyers, but nothing happened,” he says. Kpebu admired fellow lawyer and journalist Samson Lardi Anyenini, who had built a reputation on anti-graft campaigning and defending journalists against defamation suits slapped on them by the corporate and political elite. “(Lardi) had a great effect on me because I noticed he was a lone ranger. I asked myself, ‘Why are others (lawyers) not talking?’”
The boss was the president’s friend
When he was approached in 2020 on behalf of local communities and environmental groups to lead a high-profile legal challenge against polluting mining in the forest, he went for it—and didn’t give up, not even when his boss made him choose between continuing the case and keeping his position at the law firm. “One day he confronted me about whether it was true that we were suing the government,” Kpebu recalls. “When I confirmed, he responded, ‘You can’t do that. (Then president) Akufo-Addo is my friend. He was sitting in my house a few weeks ago.’” Kpebu says he explained that the water from Atewa Forest—which citizens in Accra also rely on—was at risk of being poisoned, but his boss remained adamant. “He said, ‘No, no! That is my name you’re using. You have to decide between the case and you staying to practise with me,’” Kpebu told ZAM. “I told him I would leave then. He just said, ‘Yes, OK. You have two weeks.’”
He has no regrets, Kpebu says, even if his initial days as an independent attorney were a “tough initiation” into retaliation by politicians. He was branded an “opposition lawyer,” leading some clients to abandon him for fear of losing their cases. A major setback was losing a contract worth US$200,000 in legal fees. “The contractor told me that I was cancelled because I’m embroiled in litigation with the government.” Nevertheless, Kpebu continued making his points on political talk shows and current affairs programs, relentlessly needling the government on mismanagement and poor governance.
Austerity protests
When, in 2022, Ghana plunged into an economic crisis, Kpebu became a convenor for the ‘Kumi Preko (Kill Me at Once) Reloaded’ protest—a revival of one of Ghana’s biggest demonstrations ever: Kumi Preko in 1995, which had rebelled against the then-introduced Value Added Tax (2). This time, the protests were prompted by austerity measures the government had taken after defaulting on the payment of its debt, which had multiplied six-fold—to US$47 billion—since 2017.
What most angered Kpebu and the other protestors was that both the debt and the austerity measures reflected the government’s preference for large spending on capital projects that brought significant benefits to the political and business elite in the form of contracts and expenses, instead of protecting public interest spending such as on pension funds and health services. Even now, as the government was squeezing the populace and frantically seeking more support from the IMF, it was continuing with expensive, large-scale construction projects.
“You don’t kill your citizens for infrastructure projects”
Kpebu believes that the elections held in 2024 had a lot to do with these choices. In Ghana, incumbent parties tend to campaign heavily on the benefits of infrastructure projects to secure support from regional and local power players, who in turn are positioned to court votes. “We came up with a long list of things the government could have done to cut down on its expenditure. But it just wasn’t willing. They saw the elections coming and wanted to continue spending so they could have (projects) to show for it.” At the same time, the government was taking from citizens “who needed the money to buy medicine, pay school fees, and pay rent. You don’t kill your citizens to do infrastructural development.”
A win for protest
The Kumi Preko Reloaded protests eventually culminated in the Julorbi House protests in September 2023, with the election date still more than a year ahead. In the December 2024 elections, the government’s ruling party was resoundingly defeated.
In the elections, the ruling party was resoundingly defeated
Former president packed the courts with loyalists
Critics accuse former President Nana Akufo-Addo of systematically packing the courts with ruling party loyalists. Justice Ernest Yao Gaewu, a former candidate for Akufo-Addo’s party, was appointed to the High Court in 2020 and promoted to the Supreme Court within two years. Similarly, Justice Yonny Kulendi, a protégé of Akufo-Addo, and Justice Nene Amegatcher, who worked at the law firm of a strong ally of Akufo-Addo, also secured seats on the apex court. These appointments bypassed senior Court of Appeal judges deemed unfavourable to the then ruling party. Some actions of this ‘packed’ Supreme Court, dubbed the “Unanimous SC” by critics, include the disqualification of an opposition MP and the delay of a case concerning the dismissal of an Auditor-General appointed by the opposition. By taking three years to cancel the presidential suspension order against the official, the Court ensured that, by the end, the man was well into retirement.
Through the years, Kpebu has received many “insults and threats to kill me,” he says. The most terrifying incident occurred on January 3, 2025, when, upon returning from Christmas break, he discovered that a bullet had been fired through the roof of his office. “It was on my chair. I went to ask my neighbours if there was any firing of firearms. They said no.” Then he saw a puncture in the roof. He concluded that someone might have deliberately fired a bullet into his office.
<p">He found the bullet days after joining a committee, formed by then newly re-elected President John Mahama, to investigate corruption and state asset looting—including prime lands—by former president Akufo-Addo’s appointees. The incident impressed on him that, no matter which party was in power, the system itself would still fight to maintain the status quo. Still, Kpebu says he has “no regrets at all” and remains “cautiously optimistic.”
Disrespecting and being queer
Among the 2023 #OccupyJulorbiHouse protestors was also then 25-year-old Elorm Ababio, popularly known as ‘Ama Governor’: a young, queer lawyer, YouTuber, and civil rights activist. Ababio was only 18 when she started denouncing the injustices and daily struggles of ordinary people in Ghana on social media. By 21, and in her third year at law school, she had renounced her religious views, which she says hampered her activism for the rights of sexual minorities. “I was just like, oh my God, religion is the opium of the masses. It dogmatizes everybody. We were further marginalised by the religious perspectives. That was what radicalised me,” she says.
A “concerned citizen”, argued that she was “not fit”
After having graduated, Ababio was set to be called to the bar at its intake on November 11, 2022. But then she saw a social media post saying that someone had petitioned the General Legal Council (GLC) to bar her, arguing that she was “not fit.” The petitioner, a ‘concerned citizen of the Republic of Ghana,’ had filed a formal case against her appointment on three grounds – disrespecting the Ghana School of Law in videos, wearing her nose ring to school, and being queer. “Two of these were completely made-up lies. The third one, about my sexuality and my activism for the rights of sexual minorities, was true, but was not grounds on which someone could say that I don’t have good character.”
The GLC accepted the petition. It disqualified her and denied her even a right of reply to defend herself. However, she insisted on her right to complain, and after four months and four meetings, the GLC, according to Ababio, “eventually said it was a mistake and that the person lied” against her. She was to be considered the following year. In the meantime, she joined the #OccupyJulorbiHouse protest.
When, on October 18, 2023, she went to the rehearsal for the “Call to the Bar” ceremony, which was to take place formally two days later, she was still prevented by security personnel and the police from entering the auditorium. “I was then sitting there on the ground, completely distraught, when they brought me a letter—the paper was hot because they had just printed it out—which said that ‘elements noted in my public conduct’ were why, once again, I had not been considered. They said the next consideration would be the next call, which would be in 2024.”
Class struggle
In May 2024, it finally happened, and on June 19, 2024, Ababio made her first appearance in court as a lawyer, defending 34 #OccupyJulorbiHouse protestors. (Shortly after, she was briefly arrested herself, as one of the 53 #FixTheCountry protestors detained while marching against illegal mining.)
In a comment, Ababio says the law profession in Ghana is guarded like an “elitist academy” because the “neo-colonialist puppets” need “to keep the poor in check,” as “it all comes down to our class struggle.” But she insists, like Kpebu and Barker-Vormawor, that all the retaliation won’t stop her from “taking on injustice anywhere” in Ghana.
- (1) The groundwork for this action had been prepared by fellow ‘legal rebel’ and forest law specialist Clement Akapame, who demolished the legal grounds for Li4626. While the new government now seeks to amend the law, civil society continues to demand its total repeal. Also see the Ghana chapter in ZAM’s 2024 Transnational Investigation, Into the Woods
- Ironically, the original 1995 protest was led by none other than Nana Akufo-Addo, who was now president.
See the first instalments in this Transnational Investigation here:
Legal Rebels | Cameroon, Uganda, Nigeria, Malawi & Ghana
Cameroon | A new alliance
Nigeria | Breaking up the family
Malawi | Naming and shaming
Uganda | Radical rudeness
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