What a bill asks of the person voting on it

Picture a Member of Parliament handed an eighty-page bill on the morning of the vote. Somebody has to tell him what it says. If he cannot read it himself, that somebody will usually be a whip, a minister’s aide, or a person with a stake in the outcome, and the vote he casts will belong to them with his name attached.

I raise this because we have made it easy to arrive in Parliament and left it unclear what a person needs once there. Anyone with the money for a party primary and the friends to carry the delegates can reach the House.

Experience in public life, the habit of reading and writing clearly, a working sense of where Ghana sits in the world: the law asks for none of these, and the parties ask for them too rarely. This is not a complaint about one party. It applies to all of them, and it should worry every Ghanaian who wants the House to work.

I want to be careful about what I am asking for. I am not saying that only graduates belong in Parliament. A certificate is no proof of judgement, and a degree has never guaranteed one. My claim is smaller and harder to answer. A person who will make law should be able to read it, write about it, and think clearly about it. He or she should also know enough about the country and the world to understand what a law is for. The next general election is due in 2028, so the parties have time to change their rules if they choose to.

What the Constitution asks of a candidate

Article 94 sets out who may stand. A candidate must be a Ghanaian citizen, at least twenty-one years old, and a registered voter. He or she must live in the constituency, or have lived there for five of the ten years before the election, or hail from it, and must have paid all taxes or made a satisfactory arrangement to pay them. A short list of disqualifications follows, including owing allegiance to another country.

The article says nothing about literacy, schooling, or knowledge of public affairs, and a 2017 academic study of English in Parliament read it the same way: proficiency and educational background are not prerequisites.

There is a good argument for keeping the door wide. Candidacy is a right of citizenship, and I would not want anyone shut out for being poor or for lacking formal schooling. But look at who is kept out. Serving members of the Civil Service, the Audit Service, the Legal Service, the Judicial Service, the Police, the Armed Forces, and several other services cannot stand while they hold those posts. People who have spent years inside the machinery of government cannot stand while they serve in it, yet a person with no such grounding meets no test at all. The rules screen for where you are employed. They do not screen for whether you understand the job.

What it costs to get on the ballot

If the Constitution asks little, the parties are supposed to ask more. What they mostly ask for is money.

Data from the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has long warned that the actual cost of securing a parliamentary seat now averages an astronomical GH¢4 million, a systemic crisis that recently forced the Supreme Court to openly decry the commercialisation of internal party elections. But to understand the true structural rot, one must look at the immediate institutional barriers: the official filing fees.

For the primaries preceding the 2024 elections, the NPP charged aspirants in seats held by sitting MPs GH¢78,000 in total: GH¢3,000 for forms, GH¢35,000 as a filing fee, and GH¢40,000 as a development fee. The NDC charged GH¢5,000 for nomination and GH¢40,000 to file, coming to GH¢45,000. Both parties offered reductions to women and persons with disabilities. A candidate who won the primary then paid the Electoral Commission a further GH¢10,000 to be on the ballot (GH¢7,500 for women and persons with disabilities).

Put that beside a wage. The historic national daily minimum wage during that baseline primary season was GH¢18.15. For an NDC aspirant who reaches the ballot, the bare minimum entry fees come to GH¢55,000—which is 3,030 days of that daily wage saved in full. For an NPP aspirant battling for a seat with a sitting MP, the entry fees total GH¢88,000, which translates to 4,848 days of continuous minimum-wage labour.

These are only the base fees. Delegates must be visited, branches looked after, and a campaign paid for. What a primary costs in full is rarely disclosed, which is part of the trouble. The system adds to it. Ghana’s 276 seats are single-member constituencies, and the candidate with the most votes wins. In the strongholds, such as the Volta Region for the NDC and Ashanti and Eastern for the NPP, winning the primary is close to winning the seat. The contest that counts is then held among party members and delegates rather than among all voters, and money counts for most in that small room.

A House where nearly half the faces are new

In 2024, 801 candidates were registered for the parliamentary election. By published counts, between 120 and 128 of the members who took their seats were new to Parliament—close to half the House. Fresh faces are welcome, and a House that renews itself is healthier than one that never changes. But renewal on that scale is only safe if the newcomers are ready, and voters are rarely shown any evidence that they are.

What the work demands

A bill is a written text, and under Order 63 of the Standing Orders, the House ordinarily conducts its proceedings in English. Committee work means reading memoranda, questioning ministers, and testing loan agreements and budget lines. A member who cannot do that reading depends on others for the meaning of what he votes on. That hands power from the legislature to the executive and to whoever can afford good readers. Our Constitution wants Parliament to check the executive, and a House cannot check what it cannot read. This is true under any government.

Language, and a fair worry

I know how this argument can be misheard. Some will say I am asking Parliament to bow to English. I am not. The historic update to the Parliamentary Standing Orders in early 2024 explicitly expanded the floor to indigenous languages, provided interpretation facilities are present. Members have vibrantly utilised this, addressing the House in Twi, Ga, Fante, Ewe, Dagbani, and the Guan languages, interpreting themselves or utilising the floor's transitional framework.

So my point has nothing to do with accent or polish. A member who thinks clearly in Ewe, Dagbani, or Fante is worth more than one who speaks fluent English and has nothing to say. What I ask is that a member can understand written law, and can explain a position plainly in whichever language he or she speaks best. Until key bills exist in the languages Ghanaians speak at home, a member has to be able to read the English text, or have it read to him faithfully, and that is the gap I want closed.

What experience really means

When I say prior experience, I do not mean a title on a business card. I mean years spent in a place where you had to explain a decision to the people it affected and defend it. A district assembly committee, a teachers’ association, a trade union, a market traders’ association, a professional body, a newsroom, a clinic, a court, a cooperative, a civil society group: each teaches something legislation needs, which is how to draft, argue, compromise, read a budget, and account for money that is not your own.

A person who has done that has served an apprenticeship in public life. A person who has only paid for a campaign has served an apprenticeship in fundraising. Sometimes one person has done both, but they are different things, and a House full of the second kind will struggle to do the work of the first.

The Ghana we are, and the leadership we deserve

Ghana thinks well of itself, and with reason. It has changed its governing party through the ballot four times since 1992—in 2001, 2009, 2017, and 2025. President Mahama was sworn in on 7 January 2025, succeeding President Akufo-Addo. That record is only as strong as the institutions behind it, and Parliament is the one most open to public view. Its proceedings are regularly streamed on social media, so any voter with a phone can watch what a member does with the mandate.

Those voters are young, connected, and short of patience. The country does not need a representative who attends funerals and donates to durbars. It needs someone who can explain a budget line to a trader in the market, in her own language, and then argue it in committee.

It also needs someone who understands how the world works: how cocoa is priced, how debt gets restructured, how a trade agreement is read, what migration does to a family’s income. Ghana’s problems are felt locally but are often caused far away, and a leader who cannot read the world will keep being surprised by it. The constituents pay for each surprise. Ghana does not need a House full of scholars. It needs members who can read what they vote on, say plainly what they believe, and answer to the people who live with the result.

What can be done

The parties come first. Vetting already exists: make the vetting test the actual work. Give each aspirant an extract of a real bill and ask for a plain language summary. Ask for a short written memo on a problem in the constituency. Put the aspirant before a panel that includes people from outside the party, and publish the criteria. Cut or cap development fees, widen the reductions, and require aspirants to declare who pays for a primary campaign.

Building upon the structural debates generated by the landmark 2011 Constitution Review Commission, any future constitutional framework must debate openly whether Article 94 needs a minimum literacy or functional competence standard. I would give the parties the first chance to fix this themselves, because a state test can shut out capable people in remote places. But a constitutional floor is not unreasonable, and we should argue about it in the open rather than avoid it.

Voters hold the last word. Ask the person who wants your vote to explain a bill or a budget line to you, in your language. Watch the streams. A candidate who cannot answer you on the campaign trail will not become clear on the floor of the House.

A seat whose entry price runs to thousands of days of the minimum wage will, sooner or later, be filled by those who can pay it and not necessarily by those who can do the job. Ghana can afford better, and it can decide to demand it.

About the Author

Dominic Senayah is an International Relations professional and policy analyst based in England, specialising in African political economy, humanitarian governance, and migration diplomacy. He holds an MA in International Relations from the UK and writes on trade policy, institutional reform, and Ghana–UK relations for audiences across Africa, the United Kingdom, and the wider Global South.