SALL not represented in parliament
Ghana divided into 16 regions
We don’t need constituencies, says Richard Ahiagbah
The Deputy Director of Research at the Office of the President, Richard Ahiagbah, has explained that the people of the Santrokofi Akpafu, Likpe, Logba (SALL) have no need to worry about representation because they are represented by their president.
He explained that the arguments about representation for these people should not have even been a conversation to be had because the government is working at ensuring that is fixed.
“I think that there’s a challenge with SALL. We’ve moved forward; we’ve come a long way, now the district is in place. Other arrangements will naturally sit on it. So, how did we get here? we got here because we wanted to divide the regions and once we have separated the two regions, inherently, the SALL area fell into Oti [region] and for that reason, been detached from Hohoe where they were attached to. There are processes in place to address that, it will be addressed.
“The skepticism for me, is problematic. It is trying to raise all of these issues to make it look as though it is political. This has nothing to do with gerrymandering and I will share my candid opinion on these issues. I don’t fancy the creation of all these districts and constituencies; we have too many, creating too many problems. So, the issue of creating constituencies will come following this,” he said.
Richard Ahiagbah was speaking on the Tuesday, January 11, 2022, edition of Good Morning Ghana on Metro TV and monitored by GhanaWeb when he made these comments.
He went on to call out the fact that nearly everything in the country is politicised, making it difficult for any productive work to be done.
He added that if the concern is with representation for the people of SALL, then they should be rest assured because they have representation in the president.
“What we have done in this country consistently is to politicise everything: there is politics and there is politicization of a thing, and so we lose objectivity. The issue is, do we even need a constituency?
“The conversation with SALL and the division of this region… my view is that we need to approach this issue intentionally. This thing about you’ll go do petition here and we’ll go and see President Akufo-Addo and all of that is not what is going to solve the problem. The calculation where people are saying the people of SALL are not represented and all of that, I hear that but are they a constituency now, so constituted? They are not
“If we’re being objective about this whole thing, we need to ask the question, do we need all these constituencies? The people of SALL are being represented by their president because SALL is not a constituency,” he said.