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The Chairperson of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), Ms Josephine Nkrumah, has called on Ghanaians to actively participate in the governance of the country especially at the local level since it is key to effective nation-building.

She said it was important that Ghanaians took a keen interest in local governance so as to demand accountability from duty bearers.

“National development is a shared responsibility and that both the government and the citizenry have complementary roles to play towards building the nation,” she said.

Social auditing engagement

At a social auditing engagement forum at Agona Otsenkorang in the Agona West Municipality in the Central Region last Wednesday, she said for the country to achieve the desired growth and development, the citizenry must partner those in leadership positions towards achieving such a goal.

The social auditing engagement forum is being carried out by the NCCE across all the 260 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAS) nationwide to promote discourse among the citizens and officeholders on planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development projects and programmes.

It is under the Accountability, Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption Programme (ARAP), a joint anti-corruption initiative between the Government of Ghana and the European Union (EU).

Monitor programmes

Ms Nkrumah noted that for the nation to reap the full benefit of projects and programmes, it was important that the citizenry monitored such projects and interventions under implementation in their respective communities.

“It would be a great disservice to the nation for people not to monitor the construction of projects in the respective communities since such projects could be shoddily done,” she pointed out.

She also called on beneficiaries of such development projects to regularly maintain such projects using local resources instead of waiting for the government to rehabilitate such projects.

Road project to be fixed

Responding to a question on the construction of the main road to the town, the Municipal Chief Executive for Agona West, Mrs Justina Marigold Assan, indicated that the project would be fixed in two phases to ease transportation on the road.

She stated that the road had been awarded on contract by the government and would be completed to help in the carting of agricultural produce to market centres.

For his part, the Regent of the town, Nana Osam, who chaired the event, commended the NCCE for the programme as it afforded the citizenry a unique opportunity to demand accountability from those in leadership.