President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will today deliver his third State of the Nation Address before Parliament in accordance with the Constitution.
Article 67 of the 1992 Constitution requires every sitting President to, at the beginning of every session of Parliament, deliver a message on the state of the nation to the House.
“The President shall, at the beginning of each session of Parliament and before a dissolution of Parliament, deliver to Parliament, a message on the state of the nation,” the Article states.
President Akufo-Addo is expected to address a wide range of issues bordering on governance, the economy, private sector development, agriculture, housing and infrastructure, health, education, energy, security, among others.
He will brief the House on the performance of the various sectors of the economy, touch on some of the key challenges confronting the government and how those challenges are being addressed and outline a number of programmes and projects to be introduced this year.
In his address last year, President Akufo-Addo announced plans to establish the Nations Builders Corps which was inaugurated couple of months ago, the process of creating new regions which was completed last week, among other programmes.
He highlighted the successes of his administration since its inauguration, including new interventions in public procurements that had saved the country about GH¢800 million and the impressive macro-economic indicators.
He also spoke about the transfer of some GH¢3.1 billion of Tier 2 pension funds into the custodial accounts of the pension schemes of the labour unions, funds that have been outstanding for six years, and about which the labour unions had been loudly complaining.
President Akufo-Addo is likely to brief the House on plans to elect Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives which was firm in the manifesto commitment of the New Patriotic Party ahead of the 2016 election.
The President has consulted former presidents of the republic on the issue.
However, the constitutional impediment to the election of MMDCEs, in Article 55 of the Constitution, an entrenched clause, must, therefore, be removed to pave the way.
President Akufo-Addo has proposed that the constitutional processes for a nationwide referendum should be initiated in such a manner that the holding of the referendum would take place at the same time as this year’s District Assembly elections.
If successful, the outcome of the referendum would mean that the current set of MMDCEs would be the last batch of chief executives to be appointed under the current system.
By Yaw Kyei
