The Center for Civic Engagement and Governance (CCEG) has called on the Mahama administration to expedite efforts toward enabling the election of Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) to help strengthen Ghana's decentralisation process.
According to the civil society organisation, the current decentralisation architecture has failed to deliver the meaningful development envisioned under the Local Governance Act, 2016 (Act 936).
Although the Act provides a robust legal framework for both administrative and political decentralisation, CCEG argues that communities at the local level lack true accountability, as MMDCEs often show loyalty to the appointing authority rather than to the people they serve.
In a statement analysing the shortcomings of Ghana's local governance system, Wesley Owusu, Co-founder of CCEG, stated that the centralised mode of appointing MMDCEs "weakens local ownership and accountability because it creates a situation where MMDCEs are more loyal to the appointing authority than to the people they are meant to serve." Decentralisation and Development: What's Missing?
