Most Ghanaians can’t name their Assemblyman or woman. They don’t know what electoral area they belong to, let alone which municipal assembly governs them. Yet, they loudly complain about choked gutters, uncollected refuse, bad roads, and poor sanitation. The weird irony is the very people who should hold local government accountable have no clue how it works.

For decades, district-level governance, the most immediate form of government, has been ignored by the very citizens it serves. In most communities, the Assemblyman’s job has been reduced to that of a squatter: under-resourced, undervalued, and often chosen for popularity rather than competence.

Urban dwellers, in particular, treat local governance as something that happens somewhere else, as if Accra or Kumasi were managed directly from Jubilee House. The result is predictable: ineffective local representation, disorganized neighbourhoods, and a chronic overreliance on central government for things that should be solved at the community level.

Yet, this year, the government has taken an important step by allocating GHS 100 million in the 2025 Budget to pay monthly allowances of GHS 1,300 to all 9,085 Assembly Members across Ghana’s 261 districts. It’s a commendable policy, long overdue, considering the burden these men and women carry without formal compensation. However, this good idea risks becoming another expensive political handout if not linked to performance.

If this money only rewards inactivity, if Assembly Members continue to sit idle while gutters overflow and refuse piles up, then the entire initiative will go down the drain, literally and figuratively. The real test of this policy lies not in the payment itself, but in whether it sparks measurable improvements in sanitation, local security, infrastructure maintenance, and community engagement.

But the blame cannot fall solely on the Assembly Members. The Ghanaian citizen must face an uncomfortable truth: we are the problem. We ignore district elections, mock the few who participate, and then rage on social media about national failures. The educated and “informed” segment of society, who should know better, are the worst offenders. They have abandoned the local governance space entirely, leaving it to the least equipped to represent the community.

Until citizens take district governance seriously, until we start knowing our Assembly Members, attending local meetings, and participating in community clean-ups, Ghana’s local government system will remain weak. And no amount of central government funding will change that.

So yes, paying Assembly Members is laudable. But unless citizens themselves wake up and engage the system meaningfully, this GHS 100 million initiative will be nothing more than another generous waste, a reflection not of government inefficiency alone, but of a nation that has forgotten that governance begins at its doorstep.