Minority accuses gov’t of defying Court Order by delaying Sedina Tamakloe’s imprisonment

Parliamentary opposition figures have launched a broadside at the government, contending that authorities deliberately kept a convicted former microfinance agency director out of prison for a fortnight following her extradition from abroad — an allegation the Minority frames as a flagrant breach of judicial authority.

Sedina Tamakloe-Attionu, the ex-chief executive of the Microfinance and Small Loans Centre, returned to Ghanaian soil on June 9, 2026, to begin serving a decade-long prison sentence imposed by a court of law. Yet she did not enter prison until June 24, an interval the Minority characterises as an unjustifiable delay that amounts to contempt of court.

The discrepancy has created a public controversy, with government spokesperson Felix Kwakye Ofosu having previously suggested that Tamakloe entered prison upon her arrival in Ghana. That characterisation, opposition parliamentarians now assert, was inaccurate.

Speaking from the parliamentary floor on Thursday, June 25, Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah, a member of the Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee, spelled out the opposition’s grievance in unambiguous terms.

“We can categorically state that until yesterday, June 24, Madam Sedina Tamakloe was not in prison custody. From June 9, when she arrived, to June 24, she was not in prison custody. That is a matter of record,” he declared.

The 15-day gap between arrival and incarceration represents, in the Minority’s view, an unauthorised suspension of a sentence handed down by a tribunal with the authority to impose it. By permitting Tamakloe to remain at liberty despite a binding court judgment demanding her imprisonment, the government has usurped judicial power and rendered itself in violation of the foundational principle that executive actors must comply with lawful orders emanating from the bench.

“By preventing her from serving the prison term for the 15 days that she has been in Ghana, government has interfered with a lawful order of a court of competent jurisdiction, and that is contempt of court,” Awuah stated.

The Minority further suggested that the preferential treatment afforded to Tamakloe flows from her perceived alignment with governing party circles — an insinuation that the administration granted her special dispensation precisely because she is viewed as “one of its own.”

Awuah also alleged that alongside the delayed incarceration, government officials have offered Tamakloe reassurance that they will exhaust all available channels to overturn her conviction.

“She is in prison custody now. She was admitted yesterday, and she has been given assurances. Another assurance she has been given is that they are going to work around the clock to have the decision overturned,” he said.

The allegation, if substantiated, would suggest that political actors are working simultaneously to execute a sentence while pledging to undo it — a posture the Minority views as revealing the underlying political motivations animating the delay in her imprisonment.

Yaw Opoku Amoako

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