A Member of the Council of State, Prof Akilapka Sawyer has expressed regret at the failure of the Council to play its advisory role on what he calls serious national questions in the country. “Let me say frankly that there’ve been so many difficult questions which we have not as a Council addressed and it’s one of my personal regrets and I am saying it publicly now in the hope that my colleagues on Council will take me seriously and let us get to work on some of these matters,” he said. What are these difficult questions? sit-in host of Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, Bernard Nasara Shaibu asked, to which he responded, “Well, I won’t list them; I will simply say that there’ve been some major national questions on which we should have been more forthcoming as a Council.” Are they related to agriculture or security or the economy or what? Bernard pushed, “I will not answer anymore on that. All I can say is that there’ve been major question which we ought to have addressed which have not been addressed,” he maintained. Prof. Sawyer stressed the need for a national culture of consultation, revealing that the Council of State, for instance, was not consulted on the controversial STX housing project which appears to have become an albatross on the neck of the government. According to him, the Council of State is “supposed to provide advice to the president, to government, to Parliament, to the Judiciary, to all our public institutions but to do so privately and in confidence.” He said whenever the Council tenders advice, the government listens but the “question is, on what issues do we tender advice”? The Council, he said has proffered advice to the government on many issues – some taken, some spurned – but the members of the Council can neither take credit for the achievements of the government nor take blame for what has not been achieved by the Mills administration. Prof. Sawyer, who is also a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, nonetheless maintained the Council of State is relevant to the country’s political structure.