Ghana’s constitutional review process should be fixing real defects in our national security architecture. Instead, the Constitution Review Committee has produced recommendations that recycle existing law, ignore critical institutional gaps, and risk weakening rather than strengthening security governance.
Nowhere is this more evident than in its proposals on the National Security Council (NSC).
The Committee proposes amending Article 83(1) of the 1992 Constitution to include the Minister responsible for Foreign Affairs on the NSC.
This is an astonishing error. Article 83(1)(b) already lists the Foreign Affairs Minister as a statutory member of the Council. Is presenting an existing constitutional provision as a reform measure be reduced to a mere oversight? It is either carelessness or a troubling lack of constitutional familiarity, which raises issues about the thoroughness of the work done.
Restating the Constitution does nothing to improve national security governance.
Even more serious is what the Commission failed to fix
The National Security Coordinator has been central to NSC operations throughout the Fourth Republic, coordinating intelligence agencies, overseeing national security strategy, and ensuring operational coherence across the security sector.
Yet the Constitution does not expressly recognise the Coordinator as a member of the NSC.
Instead, the officeholder is usually smuggled in as one of the President’s three appointees under Article 83(1)(e). This is convention, not law. A President could legally exclude the Coordinator from the Council without breaching the Constitution, a disastrous but entirely lawful outcome.
Given the Coordinator’s extensive statutory responsibilities under the Security and Intelligence Agencies Act, 2020 (Act 1030), this omission is indefensible. If constitutional reform is meant to add certainty and accountability, the Coordinator’s membership should have been explicitly entrenched. It was not.
The Committee also recommends adding the heads of the Immigration Service and NACOC to the NSC. This is unnecessary and ill-conceived.
The Minister for the Interior is already on the Council. He or she supervises both agencies, along with NADMO, the Fire Service, and others. If agency heads must sit on the NSC despite ministerial representation, where does it stop?
The Constitution already provides a sensible mechanism. Article 83(3) allows the President, in consultation with the NSC, to invite any relevant person or agency to meetings when required. This ensures expertise without permanently bloating the Council.
Expanding the NSC this way risks turning a strategic body into an unwieldy talking shop.
The glaring anomaly the committee ignored
Most damning of all is the Commission’s silence on the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS).
For over 30 years, the NSCS has operated at the heart of Ghana’s security system and yet it has no express constitutional or statutory basis. Neither the 1992 Constitution nor Act 1030 establishes it, defines its mandate, limits its powers, or clarifies its relationship with other security agencies.
This is not a technical omission; it is a constitutional failure.
Article 85 of the Constitution restricts the creation of national security institutions to those expressly authorised. Allowing a powerful security body to operate outside this framework invites mandate creep and weakens democratic oversight.
If the review was serious, this is where it should have focused.
By recycling existing provisions, omitting the National Security Coordinator, bloating the NSC, and ignoring the legal vacuum surrounding the NSCS, the Constitution Review Committee has fundamentally misdiagnosed Ghana’s national security problem
By The Matador
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