On Tuesday, February 3, 2026, Parliament resumed sitting. This is the second session of the 9th parliament. As is required, the house has advertised a long list of items on its business calendar for this first meeting. Reading through the agenda made me think about how much impact we will have as legislators on the lives of citizens by the time we finish our business. I’ve been asking myself: how much impact will the House’s outlined agenda have on the lives of Our People? The average Ghanaian. The unemployed yet still hopeful young men and women of our country. Our Traders and hustlers squashed aboard trotros and long-distance Benz 207s flying on pot-holed highways. Our business people and entrepreneurs are huddling with accountants to make the January payroll and meet their odious tax obligations. Our cocoa farmers, with their cargo of precious beans, are waiting expectantly for promises made to be met.
The People’s Business is what keeps our constituents and citizens awake at night. And that ought to be our business too.
As Parliament has resumed, you can be sure there will be a lot of atmospherics. But will we do the kind of work that impacts our people’s lives?
Too often, Parliament reduces itself to a chamber of theatre. Debates are framed for clips. Interventions are judged by the loudness of the contributor’s voice rather than by the substance delivered. Important national questions are crowded out by partisan exchanges that may entertain but rarely enlighten and produce heat but little light.
Yet outside the chamber, young Ghanaians are dealing with realities so harsh that they have little appetite for parliamentary drama. Jobs are scarce. Food prices are high. Manufacturing is struggling. The cedi’s prop up is benefiting some and hurting others. Cocoa farmers are waiting to be paid. Security concerns across West Africa are a serious source of concern. Our regional address impacts our country’s risk profile.
Unfortunately, the nation’s deliberative chamber spends less time on these key matters and more time on performatives. We allow more time for routine ‘Government Business’ and very little time for the necessary policy and program analysis and assessments of the key issues that will impact our people most.
As we resume work in 2026, we must take ourselves – as The People’s Representatives – a lot more seriously than we have done in the past, or risk becoming irrelevant to the very people whose trust we have sworn to respect and uphold.
Of the many items listed as business for this first meeting of the second session, about five (5) are of personal interest and will receive my full attention. If pursued, I believe they will significantly impact the lives of my constituents and millions of other Ghanaians nationwide.
First, there is the motion for an inquiry into the high levels of failures in the 2025 WASSCE, which has already condemned thousands of young Ghanaians to an uncertain future, but which has been shoved to the back burner. As will be recalled, over 50% of candidates failed core mathematics, and overall performance across core subjects was poor. The initial public shock was quickly and irresponsibly reduced to partisan ping-pong, while the executive branch announced that it would do an internal review. In December 2025, the Hon Patrick Boamah and I filed a motion requesting that the Speaker initiate a Parliamentary Inquiry, so that this house of oversight could conduct a dispassionate, in-depth review of the causes and make recommendations to address them. The future of our unprecedented number of young people who failed cannot be ignored simply because it is no longer newsworthy. It is a worthy pursuit because it is the People’s Business.
Second, there is the inquiry into the gold trading losses recorded in 2025. Ghana cannot normalise large public financial losses without properly explaining them and taking steps to prevent their recurrence. It is obvious that the Government initially panicked and sought to cover up by claiming there were no losses, or that the losses should be classified as so-called “economic costs.” No one was hoodwinked by the obfuscation. Now that the temperature has come down, we need to do the sensible thing. We must understand what caused this loss and how to prevent it from recurring. That is what any serious democracy does. That is what our citizens reasonably expect of us. Transparency is not about looking for scapegoats. It is about restoring discipline and trust in the management of public resources. This is the People’s Business.
Third is an inquiry into the rising cost of manufacturing in Ghana. We often speak about industrialisation, but manufacturers are facing high energy costs, logistics inefficiencies, financing constraints, and regulatory burdens. Until these are addressed candidly, manufacturing will remain a distant aspiration rather than a driver of employment.
Between January 2025 and now, electricity bills alone have gone up by 26%, making a nonsense of any claim that industrialisation is set to boom and create jobs. More importantly, it puts our markets at risk because we are increasingly dependent on imports from countries where production costs are better managed. Parliament ought to be interested in understanding, in a nonpartisan and dispassionate manner, why this is happening and, even more importantly, what we can agree on as solutions, not slogans.
Fourth, I am following up on my Private Member’s Amendment Bill to the Public Financial Management framework. This No Plan, No Cash Bill aims to make it illegal for the treasury to fund any program not in the National Development Plan. Simple.
If adopted, this will save billions in public money spent on pet projects we did not agree to. Indeed, I believe that if we had such a law as a guardrail for the last NPP administration, it would have benefited everyone. Future Governments should have this benefit. Sound public finance is not an abstract ideal. It is a necessity to save money to do the People’s Business.
Finally, we must ensure deeper scrutiny of the government’s bills and programs. It has now become the norm of the NDC government to bring all bills under a certificate of urgency. Don’t get me wrong. The rules provide for that. But they are to be used sparingly. Now that it has become the norm, there is little room for anyone to contribute meaningfully to legislation. The days when Civil Society organisations, the media, and stakeholders could scrutinise and provide input on legislation are now a thing of the past. Bills are brought by 2 pm and passed by 12 midnight. As a house, we need the opportunity to conduct a deeper scrutiny of bills and engage with stakeholders to ensure that their preferences are reflected in the laws passed. The recent 24-hour economy authority bill shows that the government can easily pull the wool over the people’s eyes if care is not taken.
Additionally, we must continue advocacy for the government to furnish Parliament with its program and policy documents so we can exercise better oversight. In any serious democracy, MPs are not encouraged to fish for government policy or program documents to conduct oversight. The executive prioritises properly informing the house, so the house can do its job of oversight well. Of the 16 program documents we have been requesting, only one (the 24-hour economy policy) has been laid before the house. We will need to step up our advocacy and employ other tools to compel the government to make the documents available to Parliament. This is what will ensure effective oversight.
Some have tried to frame these efforts as a revisit to past policy failures. That misses the point. Democracies grow stronger by learning from experience, not by burying it. Good ideas do not lose their value because they emerge from difficult chapters. In fact, the reverse is the case.
Young Ghanaians and young West Africans are watching us closely. They care about jobs, food prices, security, and opportunity in an increasingly uncertain world. The Parliament of Ghana must rise to that expectation, for I hear more jeers than cheers from our young people when we indulge in drama that’s unbefitting even of the school-yard.
If every inquiry is dismissed because of who proposed it, accountability suffers. If every idea is judged by the party of its originators, progress slows. And if Parliament loses its place as a forum for serious national discourse and problem-solving, public trust will continue to erode.
This session is an opportunity to do better.
We can disagree without being dismissive or disagreeable. We can agree on more than our personal emoluments. And we must understand that building Ghana requires a continuous stream of good ideas, not interminable arguments over who is owed credit. It requires learning from both past policy failures and successes, making them stronger rungs on the ladder to climb higher and do better.
Inquiries into education outcomes, public financial discipline, food sovereignty, industrial competitiveness, and economic transparency are critical. We must mainstream them for serious attention. Our constituents deserve it. These are among the key reasons they chose us. Let us focus. The People’s Business is serious business.
We were not elected to act in a series for Netflix!
We were elected to do The People’s Business!
Let’s do more of that.
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The writer, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, is the Offoase Ayirebi MP and former Information and Housing Minister
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