Sit back read the legacy of ,Prof.Kwamena Ahwoi,the success story of Decentralization and local Government in Ghana. Mr. Ahwoi was PNDC Secretary (Minister) of Local Government from 1988 to 1993. He was a member of the “Akuse Group” that prepared the PNDC blue print on local government reform and decentralization in 1987 entitled “District Political Authority and Modalities for District Level Elections” that popularly came to be known as the “Blue Book. He directed, supervised and chaired the Inter- Ministerial Task Force that prepared the first major legislation and decentralization, the Local Government Law on 1988, PNDCL 207. He also made substantial input into the work of the Committee of Experts (Constitution) and the consultative Assembly whose respective work finally culminated in Chapter 20 of the 1992 Constitution on “Decentralization and Local Government. As Minister of Local Government, he piloted the Local Government Act of 1993, Act 462, as well as the other major legislation on Local Government such as the District Assemblies Common Fund Act, 1993, Act 455; the National Development Planning (System) Act, 1993, Act 480; and the Local Government (Urban, Zonal and Town Councils and Units Committees Establishment) Instrument, 1994, L.I. 1589, through Parliament. He was also the Minister who signed into existence the Legislative Instruments establishing the 110 metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies in 1988/89 He was for a very long time a member of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF) based in London, UK; President of the Afro-Asian Rural Reconstruction Organization (AARRO) based in New Delhi, India; and a founding member of the Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) based at the Secretariat in London. He has addressed Conferences of the United Nations, the International Union of Local Authorities, the European Parliament, HABITAT and AFROCITIES and participated in scores of international conferences, seminars, workshops and round tables on local government and decentralization. He also advised on decentralization programmers’ in several African countries. As legal academic, Professor Ahwoi’s passion was jurisprudence. His seminal article on “Kelsen, the Grund Norm and the 1979 Constitution “published in the University of Ghana Journal is still compulsory reading in the course on the “Pure Theory of Law” at the University of Ghana Law Faculty. At GIMPA, he has written and published extensively on local government and Decentralization, climaxed by his book on “Local Government and decentralization in Ghana” published by Unimax Macmillan. This has become the leading work on the subject on Ghana. Twenty years in polices,he believes that ,in politics you don’t always say or do what is right but instead you do what the collective agrees on. His little advice to the young generation is that do front line politics, risky with a lot of temptations it is very easy to make a wrong move or mistake.Do not rush and crash .
Posted on: Sat, 10 Aug 2013 04:46:49 +0000