Resource NCCE to play role in development

Three prominent Ghanaians have expressed concern about the deliberate failure of various governments, both past and present, to resource the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) to educate citizens about their civic rights and responsibility, especially in the fight against corruption.
They said the NCCE must be resourced to enable it to play a critical role towards the national development effort.
The former National Security Coordinator, Mr Kofi Bentum Quantson, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Asikuma-Adoben-Brakwa, Mr P.C. Appiah Ofori, and Mr Laary Bimi, Chairman of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), were of the view that
if governments resourced the NCCE they could empower the citizens be abreast of the law as well as help them to demand accountability from public office holders.
The three raised these concerns at the opening of the 9th annual constitutional week organised by the NCCE in Accra.
Mr Bimi said over the years governments had treated the commission like “a Cinderella”.
“As we speak, myself and the staff of the NCCE have not been paid our salaries for the past two months. But we are still working. In the 2009 budget, each district office of the NCCE was given a service budget of (Fifty nine Ghana Cedis) Ghc 59.00 per month and this is what a whole district office will have to use to educate Ghanaians,” he lamented.
He said for the past 16 years the national headquarters of the NCCE had been perching at the offices of the Electoral Commission (EC) headquarters where “we are always threatened with ejection notice.”
Expatiating on his concern, Mr Bentum stated that he was at a loss at the increasing rate at which governments had refused to provide the NCCE with the needed resources to educate the people about their rights and responsibility.
He asked whether the politicians were afraid that if they resourced the commission, it would be able to educate Ghanaians about their rights and that citizens would be in good stead to challenge the politicians when their rights were being trampled upon or “it was out of sheer ignorance on the part of the politician to resource the commission”.
He gave the example of the sorry state of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and said politicians had over the years ensured that the SFO was made to sink so that it would not be able to uncover the bad deeds of the politicians.
Mr Appiah-Ofori said the NCCE had the responsibility to educate Ghanaians about the need for all Ghanaians to play an active role in the fight against all forms of corruption at all levels of the society.
He said the rate at which public office holders were “stealing state resources” was alarming and that the NCCE must take its educational programmes to the grassroots and equip the people with the right tools to fight the menace.
Mr Bimi said “it is true that if the politicians opened the eyes of the people they will see beyond what the politicians had been doing and detect their wrongful ways, and added that “when you are blind that is when the politicians can cheat you”.
He called for the re-introduction of civic education at basic schools to imbibe in the youth at an early age to be abreast with their civic responsibility and rights.
He expressed worry about the increasing trend of moral decadents among the entire society, saying that “We take salaries for working from 8 a.m. to 5p.m. but start work at 10 a.m. All these are corrupt practices.”
Responding, Ms Hannah Tetteh said the problem of meager funding was due to the fact that the nation had not been able to generate enough local resources to fund its own activities and had to rely on donors for support.
She said it was to arrest this situation that the government had stepped up its income generating activities, blocked sources of wastage in order to be able to provide such institutions with adequate resources.
She said as promised by the government, it would ensure that such independent governance institutions were well resourced within the first term of the Mills Administration to play their roles effectively.
Regarding corrupt politicians, Ms Tetteh said political appointees alone could not execute their corrupt agenda without the support of civil servants, and added that it was for this reason that not only politicians should be monitored but all Ghanaians in positions of authority.