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Demand accountability for your people – Ofei-Aboagye

Dr Esther Ofei-Aboagye, Chairperson of Star Ghana Foundation, has tasked traditional leaders to take on the responsibility of ensuring that political leaders are serving their people better.

“The citizenry need non-partisan reliable representation to make their needs and concerns heard to political office holders and traditional authorities are best positioned for the task so as traditional authorities you don’t always have to wait for politicians to call on them rather summon them (politicians) to render accounts of their works to the people,” she noted.

For instance, Dr Ofei-Aboagye indicated that traditional authorities provided a channel for representing the needs and interests of their subjects, and should put issues across without fear or favour instead of undermining themselves over trivial issues.

“Sometimes Nananom undermine themselves by undervaluing the power that they have, the social capital that they have, the moral persuasion that they have and move to one side or another or take on a certain posture on which political authorities are beholding to the state,” she bemoaned.

Dr Ofei-Aboagye stressed that chiefs could demand accountability, transparency and credibility from politicians because they are the custodians of the lands on which the politicians are serving saying “you can summon them, you can ask them to come and report to you, to come and share with you, what they intend to do for your people, you should not be taken for granted but revered.

“They are on your land, they are managing your people, they are supposed to be working in the interest of your people since you have the mobilising power, you can do more, you can represent your people, as politicians make numerous promises to the citizenry, especially in election periods, questioning how these promises will operationalise will put politicians on their toes.

“If we ask the question ‘how’ more often, maybe politicians will be compelled to think through the processes but very often we find that people are not ready, they don’t have an answer, they don’t have a process ready to operationalise the promises that they’ve made,” Dr Ofei-Aboagye decried.  -ghanaweb.com

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