A local governance analyst, Dr. Eric Oduro Osae, says President Nana Akufo-Addo is not bound to nominate all the persons recommended for the various Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Chief Executive positions nationwide.

A copy of the report of the 2020 MMDCE Vetting Committee sighted by Citi News made a number of recommendations to the President.

Dr. Osae who is also the Director-General of the Internal Audit Agency in a Citi News interview insisted that President Akufo-Addo has the power to nominate persons who are not on the Vetting Committee’s list.

He believes the government delayed the announcement of the approved list of MMDCEs in a bid to undertake subsequent consultations to ensure that any person who will be named is not rejected by assembly members.

“The president’s nomination is the first leg of the whole process, and the second is the approval by the General Assembly. So then the president would have to be double sure that persons he nominates will receive unanimous approval. The NPP will also go into the 2024 elections, and the performance of the government is normally upon how the MMDCEs perform. In 2017, when some of the MMDCEs were nominated, it was difficult for some of them to be approved.”

“I’m sure they do not want to repeat those mistakes, but let me add that the fact that one finds his or her name on the [Vetting Committee’s] report does not imply that the president will nominate that person. In fact, the president has every right to nominate anyone outside the list because it is his prerogative to determine who represents him at the local level.”

President Akufo-Addo has forwarded the list of approved MMDCEs to the Minister for Local Government, Decentralization and Rural Development, Dan Botwe.

Mr. Botwe is expected to, in the coming days, make the list of the recommended MMDCEs public.