The Governor and the Governed: Enhancing Participation in Ghana's Local Government System in the Bawku West District Assembly

ABSTRACT 

Establishing a governance system that would afford a people the greatest opportunity to meet their hopes and aspirations and allay their fears of the dangers of governance or the absence of a system of governance has always been the dream of nations the world over and throughout all stages of human civilization.  Consequently, nations have adopted various forms of systems of governance at different stages of their nationhood both at the national and local levels in the fulfillment of this dream. Whatever the form of governance system, the argument has been that the most effective and sustainable governance system is the one that affords the generality of the people the opportunity to effectively participate in their own governance. Ghana, like most nations has passed through various epochs of national and local government systems and is now operating a local government system that seeks, as far as practicable, to afford the ordinary man and woman the opportunity to be part of the governance system, a decentralized local government system (Constitution of Ghana: 1992), that has a three tier and four tier system. Unfortunately available data seems to suggest that not many people are afforded the opportunity to participate in the local government system as envisaged in the 1992 Republican Constitution and other legislations that were promulgated to that effect. This is the background of the research problem. This study thus seeks to investigate this Ghana's local governance system by examining the history of local governance in the country and how this could have had an influence in the current system, the current status of the system, what challenges confront its effective implementation that therefore seems not to give the ordinary citizen the opportunity to effectively participate in their own governance and what recommendations could be made to improve upon the system in as far as enhancing greater citizen participation is concerned. To be able to effectively undertake this assignment, a multiple case study approach was adopted whereby the various legislations and the relevant institutions and structures that they established for the effective functioning of the system were investigated through interviews and issue of questionnaires to some selected key stakeholders of the system, particularly at the district level. The findings revealed that after nineteen years of implementation of the current local government system in Ghana there are some success stories that serve as a pointer that after several decades of search for a more sustainable local government system, Ghana has eventually discovered one. Unfortunately however the current modus operandi of the system portrays that there are certain critical challenges that seek to derail the system from achieving its ultimate objective and that some of these challenges were inherited from the characteristics and manner of implementation of previous systems. In order to make the system effective and thereby enhance effective popular participation, a number of recommendations were made.  

The Bawku West District in the Upper East Region of Ghana is the study area