NCCE to embolden Ghanaians on rights

The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) yesterday outlined its activities for the celebration of this year’s Constitutional Week, with the aim of creating more awareness among Ghanaians of their civic rights and responsibilities.
According to the commission, Ghanaians have the obligation to permanently engage their leaders on the basis of principled democratic arrangements to build a society that respected the virtues of transparency and accountability.
“It is important that as citizens, we initiate and implement constructive actions towards ensuring that our leaders do address our needs. It is our responsibility to ensure that the right national priorities are set and that our national resources are properly managed in the best interest and welfare of the citizen,” the commission said.
The week-long programme which would be replicated in all regional and district capitals begins from April 28 to May 4, 2009. It is on the theme “Beyond elections: Citizens participation and government accountability”.
Mr Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General, would be the chairman for the inaugural ceremony and it would be addressed by President J.E.A. Mills.
The commission encouraged Ghanaians to be more concerned about issues and developments in the country and ensure that things done in their name were the right and precise decisions that emanated from their wish and represented the outcomes of their individual and collective inputs.
It advised Ghanaians not to limit the essence and practice to elections alone, because any attempt to end their participation in democracy at elections was to limit the true expression of their sovereign will as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution.
The commission also called on the media to support it to achieve its mandate of educating more Ghanaians about their civic rights and responsibilities, adding that the call for the support from the media had become very urgent in the light of national economic constraints in general and its resultant effect on the budgetary support for the commission by the central government.
A member of the commission, Mama Adokuwa Asigble IV, said the commission had been doing its best over the years within the constraint of its limited resources, but the lack of adequate resources had affected its effectiveness to reach out to the larger population.
She added that the commission had developed very effective and elaborate programmes that were targeted at educating the Ghanaian on the need to demand accountability from people they had entrusted their mandate to but these laudable programmes could not be implemented in full due to lack of resources.
She said it was against this backdrop that the commission was calling on the media to collaborate with the commission to reach out to more Ghanaians, adding that “help us to get resources and at the same time reach out to greater majority of Ghanaians”.
Mr Baron Amoafo, the Deputy Chairman of the NCCE, said the success of the Fourth Republic and its various elections were indications that the power to select leaders of this country such as Presidents and Members of Parliament (MPs) resided in the people.
“The elections have also shown that those in power can be voted out of power for a new set of government to take over from a ruling government.
Mr Kweku Baa Owusu, the Director of Public Education of the NCCE, expressed worry that although it was within their right to use their resources on whatever they pleased, it was a bit disturbing that corporate entities were not showing interest in civic education.