Local gov't concept is discriminatory and inappropriate’ - Azongo

A development planner and a consultant to the National House of Chiefs, Mr. Nyaaba-Aweeba Azongo has observed that the tag of ‘Local Government’ to the country’s decentralisation concept is discriminatory and inappropriate.

He has therefore proposed the renaming of the Ministry of ‘Local Government’ and Rural Development to Ministry of (Local Governance/Local Administration) and rural development to allow for holistic planning of the local administrative institutions for a multi-frontal approach to national development.

According to him this is significantly important given the current global crisis to explore all avenues to optimise local development as a response to the endemic nature of poverty at the predominantly rural segments of our country.

He tells B&FT in an interview in Kumasi that the concept smacks of lopsidedness and connotes a replica of the Central Government regime at the local level in what could be described as locally designed-elitist power usurpation mechanism via indigenous institutional exclusion.

Mr. Azongo was reacting to the series of protest by some chiefs against government that there were not consulted on the appointments to District Assemblies in their Traditional Areas. He says the current system ropes out the Traditional Councils as partners of the local administrative framework and that the constitutional demand of consultation with Traditional Councils for government appointees is far from the fundamental challenge confronting Traditional Councils in contemporary local administration.

‘The major problem facing our decentralisation concept is its lopsidedness and unilateral focus on District Assemblies in what could best be described as a geographical relocation of Government at the local level to replace Traditional Councils in local administration and development’ he emphasises. He said it was a sad reflection that local indigenous governance institutions which were better placed to harness the potential of the indigenous economy for poverty reduction and rural development have been by design or default left out of the existing decentralisation policy with only conventional constitutional window–dressing-consultative alms to Chiefs as an expression of recognition.

Mr. Azongo said, it is wrong and fundamentally conflicts with the basic tenets of local development administration to talk of ‘Local Government’ instead of ‘Local Governance’. This is crucially required to accommodate indigenous local institutions to forge independent but mutual collaboration of government and Indigenous governance institutions at the local level for a collective approach to rural development. ‘It is only in such a case that one can talk of a decentralisation or local governance system’ he stressed

Traditional leadership is at the very heart of Ghana‘s social–cultural and political fabric. The irony, however ,is that whilst the Ghana coats of arms, the official emblem of Ghana, has a crossed traditional leadership linguist staff and ceremonial sword in one of its four divisions as a symbol of local administration , traditional councils have no provision in the current local administrative institutional framework

He said ‘Government’ connotes a central regime or particular regime but governance is about a process of exercising authority. He said it was this logical standpoint that informed the global adoption of the concept of ‘good governance’ to replace the 1960’s popular usage of ‘good government’ which was hitherto the luring watchword in World Bank and United Nation’s circles.