Court Strikes Down GTEC’s Bid to Strip Recognition From UNEM Degrees, Orders Full Reversal
A court has dealt a decisive blow to Ghana’s tertiary education regulator, ruling that its attempt to invalidate degrees from the University of New England Malaysia was both logically flawed and procedurally unlawful — and ordering that all decisions taken against holders of those qualifications be immediately reversed.
Justice Osei presided over the case, which hinged on a fundamental contradiction in GTEC’s position. The regulator had argued that while UNEM degrees technically remained valid as certificates, they could no longer be recognised for academic or professional advancement because the institution had lost its recognised status in Ghana. The court found this logic untenable.
“Certificates are specifically acquired for those professional and academic purposes,” Justice Osei observed with pointed clarity. “Hence, if the same are invalidated or derecognised in Ghana and cannot be used for those purposes, then what should they be used for?”
Beyond that conceptual flaw, the court found that GTEC had also breached established legal procedures in its handling of the matter.
The regulator had moved to revoke the registration of OAA Consulting Limited, UNEM’s local representative in Ghana, without following the required process — which stipulates that institutions must be given six months’ notice to remedy any breaches before their registration is withdrawn.
Justice Osei ruled the revocation procedurally improper and therefore unlawful. He further determined that degree holders had every right to challenge the revocation because GTEC’s subsequent derecognition of UNEM degrees flowed directly from that initial decision.
The court’s remedy was comprehensive. It ordered GTEC and all tertiary institutions that had acted on the directive to reverse their decisions against every holder of a UNEM degree awarded before October 20, 2025.
It also issued a restraining order preventing GTEC and educational institutions from enforcing the directive against those degree holders going forward, and formally quashed the directive itself, stripping it of any legal standing.
However, the court stopped short of awarding damages to the applicants, finding that although the directive was clearly unlawful, there was insufficient evidence that employers had so fully implemented it as to result in concrete, compensable losses that could be quantified.
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