Former Director of the Ghana School of Law, Kwaku Ansa-Asare, reflects on the challenges he encountered while striving to enhance accessibility to legal education in Ghana.
Ansa-Asare shared his experiences during an interview on the program “PM Express: Personality Profile.”
His objective was to democratize legal education and ensure it was not limited to a privileged minority.
However, one particular challenge emerged when he proposed establishing a law school in Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti Region.
Despite facing derogatory name-calling and accusations of seeking favor from the government, Ansa-Asare remained resolute.
Critics claimed that expanding legal education beyond the University of Ghana would dilute its quality and insinuated that becoming a lawyer was exclusively tied to attending the law faculty in Legon.
Ansa-Asare aimed to challenge this preconceived notion, especially considering the substantial population growth since the inception of the law faculty.
He encountered resistance from various quarters intent on maintaining exclusivity within the legal fraternity and confining it to the University of Ghana.
Nevertheless, he persisted in his endeavors.
Within a span of three years, Ansa-Asare laid the groundwork for establishing law faculties at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), University of Cape Coast (UCC) in Cape Coast, and University for Development Studies (UDS) in Tamale, as he shared with JoyNews.
From 2002 to 2013, Kwaku Ansa-Asare served as the head of the Ghana School of Law.
Throughout his tenure, the legal practitioner acknowledges that he garnered adversaries while championing various positive causes. Despite this, he bears no grudges against anyone.