The writer
The passage of Ghana’s Right to Information (RTI) Act in 2019 was hailed as a watershed moment in the nation’s democratic evolution. After nearly two decades of advocacy, Act 989 finally inscribed into law the citizen’s right to access information held by public institutions. Yet seven years after its passage and nearly five years since the establishment of the Right to Information Commission in 2020, Ghana’s RTI regime has devolved from legislative triumph to operational tragedy.
The Long March to Legislative Victory
The campaign for RTI legislation began in earnest in the early 2000s, driven by media practitioners, civil society organizations, and academics who recognized that Ghana’s democratic architecture remained incomplete without robust information access. The argument was both philosophical and practical: democracy thrives not merely on periodic elections but on an informed citizenry capable of holding power to account between electoral cycles.The global context reinforced this imperative. By the time Ghana’s RTI Act was passed, over 120 countries had enacted similar legislation, aligning with international instruments from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
The Act’s provisions were comprehensive and forward-thinking. It established the presumption that all information held by public institutions is accessible unless specifically exempted. It created mechanisms for appeals and review. Most importantly, it established an independent commission with the mandate to oversee implementation, receive complaints, and ensure compliance. On paper, Ghana had crafted one of the most progressive information access frameworks in Africa.
The Phantom Commission: Inaccessibility As Institutional Culture
The Right to Information Commission, despite being fully resourced with an Executive Secretary (Mrs. Genevieve Shirley Larty), seven Board Members, and seven Senior Management Staff, has achieved the remarkable feat of becoming itself a fortress of inaccessibility in the domain of information access.
Of the three contact telephone numbers on the Commission’s website (+233 302 788 353; +233 302 788 410; +233 302 788 412), only one functions. The other two are declared “invalid” by the telecommunications network. The functional number, when dialed repeatedly over seven days in January 2026, morning and afternoon, elicited nothing but silence—no automated response, no voicemail, no human voice.
Frustrated, I completed the Commission’s online contact form on either the 7th or 8th of January 2026. Weeks later, my inquiry remains unanswered. Worse still, there is not a single direct official contact for any of the seven senior management staff—no direct email addresses, no official phone contacts. The Commission’s website displays their names and titles with bureaucratic pride, but conspicuously omits the means by which they can be reached directly. This paradox—visibility without accessibility—epitomizes the Commission’s approach to transparency: performative rather than substantive.
More troubling is the Commission’s failure to fulfill its core statutory function. When I copied the Commission (rticommission@rti.gov.gh) on an email requesting an internal review of an RTI request to a public institution, the response was deafening silence. No acknowledgment of receipt. No follow-up after the statutory review period elapsed. No intervention when the institution failed to provide the requested information.
It was only on February 9, 2026, after more than a month of persistent attempts, that I finally connected with a staff member who promised to “get back to me with feedback on my email.” The officer did indeed follow up—only to reveal that the boss was unable to trace the email I had sent on the January 7, and requested that I resend the information. That an institution mandated to ensure information accessibility cannot maintain basic email records speaks volumes about operational dysfunction.
The Paradox Of Institutional Irresponsiveness
How does an institution created to enhance governmental transparency become itself opaque? The answers lie at the intersection of political economy, organizational culture, and Ghanaian public sector pathologies.
First, there is institutional design without accountability. The RTI Commission enjoys significant autonomy but operates with minimal oversight. While independence from political interference is essential, it creates conditions for institutional inertia when not balanced with robust accountability mechanisms. Who monitors the monitor? Who ensures that the guardians of transparency are themselves transparent?
Second, the Commission’s failure reflects a broader crisis in Ghana’s public service ethos. Recruitment and retention systems often prioritize credentials over commitment, connection over competence. The result is a cadre of officials who view public service positions as sinecures rather than responsibilities, as sources of “fat salaries” rather than platforms for meaningful service. President John Dramani Mahama’s “reset agenda” must, if it is to have any substance, fundamentally reset this mindset.
Third, there is the familiar African paradox of “laws without enforcement.” As the Kenyan scholar Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o has argued, Africa is not suffering from a deficit of laws but from a surfeit of unenforced legislation. Ghana’s statute books are replete with progressive laws that exist more in theory than in practice. The RTI Act has joined this melancholy catalogue of good intentions poorly executed.
The Cost Of Institutional Failure & Path to Redemption
When the institution created to democratize access to information becomes inaccessible, it delegitimizes the entire RTI framework. Citizens lose faith not merely in the Commission but in the law itself. Public institutions, observing the Commission’s ineffectiveness, feel emboldened to ignore RTI requests with impunity. Access to information is instrumental to virtually every democratic function—investigative journalism, civil society advocacy, electoral accountability, academic research. When the RTI regime collapses, it creates a ripple effect across Ghana’s civic ecosystem.
The current state of affairs is untenable, but it is not irredeemable. Several interventions, if pursued with political will and bureaucratic seriousness, could salvage the RTI regime from its current trajectory toward irrelevance.
First, there must be immediate and comprehensive restructuring of the Commission. This should begin with a candid performance audit examining why basic functions—answering phones, responding to emails, processing complaints—are not being executed. Are there capacity constraints? Is there a shortage of personnel? Or is there, more troublingly, a culture of indifference that no amount of additional resources will remedy?
Second, the Commission’s governance structure requires strengthening. The Board must be empowered and incentivized to exercise active oversight rather than serve as a decorative appendage. Regular performance reporting to Parliament—with consequences for persistent underperformance—should be instituted. The Executive Secretary should be subject to periodic performance reviews that assess not merely administrative outputs but actual impact on information accessibility.
Third, there must be investment in technological infrastructure that reduces reliance on human responsiveness for basic functions. Automated acknowledgment systems for requests, online tracking mechanisms, and digital complaint management systems are not expensive innovations; they are basic features of modern public administration. Their absence in the RTI Commission in 2026 is inexcusable.
Fourth, there should be meaningful civil society engagement in monitoring the Commission’s performance. Organizations like the Media Foundation for West Africa, the Centre for Democratic Development, and the Ghana Integrity Initiative should be formally incorporated into oversight mechanisms, providing both external accountability and technical support.
Finally, there must be a cultural transformation within the Commission itself. This cannot be achieved through circulars or directives alone but requires leadership that understands public service as vocation rather than employment, as accountability rather than privilege. President Mahama’s government must demonstrate that the “reset” is not merely rhetorical but substantive, beginning with institutions like the RTI Commission that embody the state’s relationship with its citizens.
Conclusion: The Imperative of Implementation
Ghana’s RTI Act represents one of the country’s most significant legislative achievements of the 21st century. It embodies the aspirations of a society committed to transparency, accountability, and participatory governance. But laws, as the American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. reminded us, are not mathematical theorems; they are social instruments whose value lies entirely in their implementation.
The current state of the RTI Commission is not merely an administrative failure; it is a betrayal of the citizens who campaigned for this law, the legislators who crafted it, and the democratic ideals it was meant to advance. If an institution created to facilitate access to information is itself inaccessible, if a body tasked with promoting transparency operates opaquely, then the very foundation of the RTI regime is compromised.
As Ghana navigates the complexities of democratic consolidation in an era of global uncertainty, the effectiveness of its transparency mechanisms will prove crucial. The choice before the government is stark: either invest genuine political capital in making the RTI Commission functional and responsive, or accept that Ghana’s celebrated democratic credentials are more performative than substantive.
If the Commission established to ensure access to information by Ghanaians from public institutions becomes itself inaccessible, what is the value or significance of the passing of the RTI law, establishment of the Commission, and payment of substantial salaries to an executive secretary, senior management, and allowances to board members?
The reset that President Mahama promises must begin here, with the unglamorous but essential work of making public institutions actually serve the public. President Mahama’s reset agenda should actually reset the mindsets of public workers who think the public service is just a conduit to draw fat salaries but not to act responsively in the service of the public. The Right to Information Act can still fulfill its transformative promise—but only if the Commission charged with its implementation is itself transformed from an institutional nightmare into a functional guardian of Ghana’s democratic aspirations.
The question is not whether Ghana needs new laws but whether it possesses the political will to make existing laws work. The answer will be written not in legislative chambers but in the responsiveness of institutions like the RTI Commission to the citizens they were created to serve.
By Hardi Shahadu, Lecturer University for Development Studies