Petition Against the Creation of Additional Regions

From : Yakubu Musah Seidu (A private Citizen) To : THE CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION OF INQUIRY FOR THE CREATION OF NEW REGIONS Date : 14/12/2017 I Yakubu Musah Seidu a private citizen wish to petition your commission against the creation of additional regions in Ghana. Mr Chairman, while there may be some pockets of demand for the creation of new regions I believe that demand is not substantial and there is no real need for them and these are my reasons for stating so 1. The decentralization process that we are implementing in Ghana today does not see the region as a fulcrum of development, the region is seen as a way of de-concentration of the national Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), One can call them outpost or annexes of the national MDAs. It has no policy making power, it is setup to coordinate and harmonize district level policy for the various national level MDAs. 2. The district level is the real fulcrum of development, it is the level of devolution, where decentralization in its true sense of the concept is played out. Section 4 (1) of the Local Government Act, 1993, Act 462, provides that “Each District Assembly shall be a body corporate with perpetual succession and a common seal and may sue and be sued in its own name”. Section 4 (2) states that: “A District Assembly shall have power for the discharge of any of its functions to acquire and hold movable or immovable property, to dispose of such property and to enter into any contract or other transaction”. The District Assembly (DA) is the policy making body with legislative and taxation powers. The DA has its power derived from Article 241 (3) of the Constitution which states that: “Subject to this Constitution, a District Assembly shall be the highest political authority in the district, and shall have deliberative, legislative and executive powers”. The regions have no such powers. 3. The law also made provision for the creation of the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF), which we can call the national cake, this cake is distributed among districts not among regions. So if anybody wants to ensure that a particular area gets more of the national cake, she should be thinking of getting them more districts not regions which does not bring any "cake" home. 4. The creation of a region is not as straight forward as creating a district, it might have to go through difficult and expensive processes such as a referendum, only to create an entity that adds no real value to the lives of the people, except further deepening of the tribal and ethnic divide 5. The argument that having a region near you could bring development in not convincing to say the least because the proponents have not adduce even a single reason why that can spur development. There seem to be some underlying tribal currents for the call for additional regions, of course no one wants to live in "compound house". But at what cost? can we set a precedence of given people additional regions as and when they call for it? 6. The creation of additional regions would be an attempt to re-centralize government instead of deepening the decentralization process. If we deepen our decentralization process, the call for additional regions would become a mute, for example people would not need to travel from the districts to acquire passports and other services because those services would be readily available in the districts. 7. The resources that would be expended to put up the infrastructure and to staff the additional regional capitals could be better applied else where. Students are dying in our schools of diseases emanating from overcrowding because we do not have the resources to decongest our schools, and in another breath we are contemplating spend money we do not have to create additional bureaucracy that adds no additional value to our socio-economic development. For these reasons, Mr Chairman I hope it is clear that there is no need for the creation of additional districts at this time in our national life. I am grateful for the opportunity to send this petition. sgn Yakubu Musah Seidu (0201616123) yakubumusah31@gmail.com