Legal luminary Tsatsu Tsikata has warned that systemic exclusion, as in the Santrokofi, Akpafu, Likpe and Lolobi (SALL) case, risks eroding the state's legitimacy.

He cautioned that such conditions blur the line between lawful governance and lawlessness.

Speaking on PM Express with Evans Mensah, the former Chief Executive of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, insisted that SALL residents are entitled to compensation after being denied parliamentary representation in the 2020 elections.

“I dare say they are owed reparation,” he said, affirming the position he first stated during an award lecture.

“Yes, because they are part of this country, if they had a representative in parliament, that representative would have had access to the Common Fund and so on, which they could have used for projects in that area.”

He stressed the material impact of the exclusion.

“During those four years, they had no representation. And so in my mind, whatever the state can do to ensure that what they were not able to access in that period should be accorded to them. I think that’s fair.”

Beyond compensation, Mr Tsikata described the situation as a constitutional threat.

“I really believe that what happened in respect of SALL is not only unprecedented, but it is a danger to the Republic,” he said, warning that repeated exclusion of communities could have wider consequences.

“Because if you can have these situations where pockets of the country find that they are somehow just excluded, you can imagine how the build-up of that sort of experience, it’s more than just a few places.”

Drawing on legal philosophy, he invoked his former professor's teachings to underscore the stakes. “That’s why I also use the analogy of my law professor Hart, that you want to distinguish a legal system from a gang of robbers,” he said.

“Because a legal system is a system which is understood by the whole society, as you know, working for the benefit of the society as a whole.”

He cautioned that the rule of law must be tangible, not rhetorical.

“And that’s why we talk about the rule of law, equality before the law. But this shouldn’t just be pronouncements, because if they are just pronouncements, then you can also have a gang of robbers which constitutes itself into seemingly an order, and they try to instruct people what to do and so on.”

Mr Tsikata placed responsibility on the legal and judicial system to uphold that distinction.

“But there is a difference, and we lawyers and those in the judiciary, in the judiciary must eagerly ensure that that differentiation is clear on the minds of the population, that we are there to administer justice,” he said.

“That must be the clear testimony on the part of judges. We’re there, and what we’re doing is in the interest of justice.

"Some of the experiences that I’ve recounted do not suggest that, but I think we can encourage more and more of that commitment to justice, that commitment to the rule of law and so on. You know, these are not just phrases that.”