photo credit: University of Ghana

In a recent interview on the podcast, “All the Way Up”, the Former Executive Secretary to President John Mahama and the current Dean of the University of Ghana, School of Law, Prof. Raymond A. Atuguba shared his journey and experience of being co-opted into mainstream politics. He also shared his journey to becoming a successful lawyer and academic.

Prof. Atuguba sometime in January 2013 was appointed the Executive Secretary to then-President, John Mahama. He served for about two (2) years until his “controversial” resignation sometime in February 2015. Before assuming office as the Executive Secretary, Prof. Atuguba served in an unofficial capacity as the Governance and Legal Adviser to President Mahama after President Atta Mills passed away on 24th July 2012. Prior to this, Prof. Atuguba was widely known for his role as the Executive Secretary of the Constitution Review Commission (CRC) set up under the late President Atta Mills.

According to Prof. Atuguba, who was then in his early to mid-30s, he was sceptical about taking up any portfolio that exposed him to mainstream politics. He also felt he was too young to be taking up all these sensitive political appointments. This relative inexperience compelled him to seek advice from a lot of people.

On the challenges and lessons, he learnt whilst occupying these positions, Prof. Atuguba indicated that among others there were two key take-homes for him.

First, every politician needs to discover or rediscover his spirituality, in other words, a politician must be prayerful. Prof. Atuguba went further to say that every politician needs a backbone of spirituality otherwise he or she cannot survive in the political space.

The second thing he shared was that every politician needs to be wise. A politician needs to be as wise as the serpent in the political environment. He said a politician can be gentle as a dove but must be as wise as a serpent because “no one in those circles would ever tell you all the truth, you’ll be lucky if you got 90 per cent of the truth from any one person”.

Prof Atuguba explained that during his time as an Executive Secretary to the President, his standard operating procedure before he would advise the President on anything or submit a memo to him would be to talk to at least five different people on the subject matter. These could be people from different backgrounds, different perspectives or even people with contesting positions. He stated that by the time “you talk to all five people, and you add the 90 per cent truth that each of them gives you and then you finally get close to the right picture” to advise the President.

For the young people that are entering into politics, Prof. Atuguba based on his experience advised them to have a career or professional track record before entering into hard-core politics.

“I would not advise politics as a start-up career path. Before you get into politics,  I mean hard-core politics make sure you establish a track record, a career track record, perhaps a professional track record before getting into politics. And always make sure that there is something you can come back to because you can be sacked the day after you were given the political office. So, I will never advise someone to go directly into politics as a nascent start-off career path.”

Addressing the issue of why he advises young politicians to get a professional or career track record before getting into politics, Prof. Atuguba indicated that it helps young politicians to be independent in their thoughts, actions, and decisions. Furthermore, Prof. Atuguba stated that this will also give the young politician the power to walk away from politics and have something to return to or fall back on.

“Do something, get good at doing it, then you can go into politics and always have a pathway back. It does not matter what it is, get good at selling tomatoes before you get into politics and know the market for tomatoes so well that the day that you are dismissed, you can make a simple entry back into your business. If you don’t have that, your political superiors will know that you are vulnerable, and they will mess you up.”

He went further to say :

“When I was in the office of the President, all I had was my handbag and I was prepared any day I picked up that handbag and left the office, not to return and I knew where I would go to if I didn’t return. Imagine I didn’t have fallback positions, I’d have to take every nonsense and be quiet, I can’t speak up at meetings. I can’t say what I think or what I feel, I have to massage the truth to make sure that it preserves my position.”

Prof. Atuguba’s political and legal career among others spans from National Service, Teaching & Research Assistant at Harvard Law School, and Pupillage with the Legal Aid Board where he was assigned to the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) as a Project Director. He became an Associate Executive Director of the LRC in 2001 and subsequently in 2004, he was appointed as the Director of the LRC.

In the year 2008, Prof Atuguba left the LRC to take up an appointment at the UN as a member of the high-level task force on the Right to Development. Thereafter in 2010, Prof. Atuguba left the UN job to take up his appointment as the Executive Secretary to the CRC and subsequently to the President in 2013.

Along his career path, Prof. Atuguba has been an Assistant Lecturer, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor and now Dean of the University of Ghana, School of Law. Sometime in the year 2006, Prof. Atuguba established his law firm, Atuguba & Associates which has grown to become one of the leading boutique law firms in Ghana.

Prof. Atuguba indicated that until he got married, he had three to five professional or career engagements which occupied most of his time. However, he advised young lawyers to have a work-life balance and try to drop some responsibilities as they take on new ones in their life pursuits.

Aside from his political career and public service, Prof. Atuguba also shared his journey and experience to becoming an astute lawyer and legal scholar or academic. One of the key highlights of the interview was his notion of the characteristics of a good lawyer.

When asked about the key things that law students need to know as they approach their studies, Prof. Atuguba advised aspiring and young lawyers on four key elements that make a great lawyer.

 First, a good lawyer needs to know where and how to find the law he or she needs. This Prof Atuguba explained that to mean a firm grasp of legal sources. Will the lawyer find the law he needs in the Ghana Law Reports or at the Council for Law Reporting, Law Reform Commission,  Assembly Press (Government Printers), West Law, LexisNexis or HeinOnline?  Knowing where to find the law is the first mark of a good lawyer.

The second mark of a good lawyer is analytical skills which is what separates real lawyers from average lawyers/practitioners. A good lawyer is known for the sharpness of his analytical skills.  An average practitioner does very little analysis, what he or she does is copy and paste from previous briefs, and previous statements of cases and rolls it out into the courts. However, real lawyers will apply serious legal analysis to what they do.

The third characteristic of a good lawyer is to be worldwise. Prof. Atuguba explained that law is at the end of everything and not the beginning. Thus, a good lawyer knows enough about sociology, politics, and anthropology that underpin every legal issue. He went further to indicate that this is the reason why lawyers are supposed to be learned.  A  lawyer is not supposed to know only the law but is also supposed to know a fair bit about everything else so that his legal analysis and legal conclusions would be worldwise and informed.

The last characteristic of a good lawyer is emotional intelligence. Prof. Atuguba explained that beyond being sharp in the brain, a lawyer needs a lot of emotional intelligence. A  good lawyer needs to know when his client is lying because clients never tell the whole truth. If the lawyer is not lucky, he finds out that his client is lying only in cross-examination which comes as a surprise.

If a lawyer has enough emotional intelligence, he will be able to detect when the client is not telling him everything. He will be able to detect when his partner is not telling him everything. Lastly, he will be able to detect how to go about a particular issue to achieve the optimum benefit for his client and not just a hard direct rough legal tactic.

These are the four key things everyone who wants to be a successful lawyer needs to work on according to Prof. Atuguba.  Prof. Atuguba advised young lawyers to practice from well-structured law firms or have very good seniors that will guide them in their law practice. He indicated that a young lawyer must have either one of the two or both.

Lastly, Prof. Atuguba advised young practitioners to establish contact and connection with several seniors so they can consult them on issues they will be confronted with. He added that there is no need to reinvent the wheel when there are seniors who have already done what you are about to do as a young lawyer.

photo credit: Atuguba & Associates

“In my world failure does not exist, failure doesn’t exist in my vocabulary. Why do I say that? Anytime you “fail” two things have happened; one, you have succeeded in building a body of knowledge and experience for yourself, which makes your next attempt easier, better, and more likely to “succeed”.

“The second thing that happens is that you’ve built a body of knowledge and experience which can help someone else or some other people, trot that path that you have trot easier and better. if you view it that way, failure is a figment of the imagination because we never fail at doing something. If you look deeply enough into what you call failure, there’s a lot of success” – Professor Raymond A. Atuguba, April 2023.

Find below the full interview:

credit: ALL THE WAY UP podcast by Jeffrey Mensah

email: barnabas.abisa@gmail.com