Ghana Police Service asks Supreme Court to overturn promotion victory of 40 Chief Inspectors
The appeal targets the January 2026 judgment in which the Court of Appeal directed the Police Service to promote the officers and pay them consequential benefits from the date they ought to have advanced, with implementation to be completed within six months.
The Ghana Police Service has taken its fight with 40 Chief Inspectors to the Supreme Court, asking the apex court to reverse the Court of Appeal decision that ordered their promotion and related financial benefits.
The appeal targets the January 2026 judgment in which the Court of Appeal directed the Police Service to promote the officers and pay them consequential benefits from the date they ought to have advanced, with implementation to be completed within six months.
In its notice of appeal, the Service argues that the Court of Appeal wrongly compelled the Police Council, the Inspector-General of Police and the Police Appointments and Promotions Advisory Board to promote the officers under the 2021 Amnesty Programme, even though that programme had lapsed and senior officer promotions are governed by the Police Service Regulations, 2012 (C.I. 76).
The Police Service’s position is that the amnesty arrangement applied to junior ranks and did not create an automatic legal entitlement for Chief Inspectors to move into the rank of Assistant Superintendent of Police merely because they had obtained degree qualifications. It says promotions at that level must follow the statutory criteria and procedures laid down in C.I. 76.
The Service is also contesting the appellate court’s finding that the officers had been treated unfairly or discriminatorily. According to the appeal, the judges themselves acknowledged that promotion to ASP involves several statutory actors and that no officer in circumstances identical to the 40 Chief Inspectors had been treated differently.
Another plank of the appeal is that the Court of Appeal exceeded its proper role by ordering statutory bodies to act within a fixed period and in effect predetermining the result of a discretionary promotion process. The Police Service says that approach improperly interfered with the regulatory framework for promotions and created a pathway for senior officers not recognised under the governing regulations.
The dispute began after the 40 officers, led by Chief Inspector Christopher Okpattah, sued over what they described as their exclusion from a special promotion amnesty that benefited degree-holding officers in the service. Their suit was dismissed by the High Court in February 2025, but the Court of Appeal later sided with them. It is that appellate victory the Police Service now wants set aside.
