Full Text: NPP’s position on the review of the 1992 Constitution

The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has put out its official position on the ongoing constitutional review process.

Below is the party’s full statement read at its press conference on Thursday, September 17, 2026.

NEW PATRIOTIC PARTY

POLICY CO-ORDINATION SECRETARIAT

REMARKS AT A PRESS CONFERENCE

The Position of the New Patriotic Party on the Review of the 1992 Constitution

Accra, Thursday 17th September 2026

Opening

Representatives of Civil Society groups

Representatives of the Trades Union Congress

The Delegation from the Institute of Economic Affairs

Representatives of Political Parties

Ladies and gentlemen of the press, good morning and thank you for joining us.

Last Thursday, 10 September 2026, the National Council of the NPP met, considered and approved a report on the ongoing constitution review exercise of our dear Republic.

The report was prepared by an ad-hoc committee comprising the following

• Prof. Rev. Aaron Mike Oquaye, Esq.,
• H.E. Paapa Owusu Ankomah, Esq.
• H.E. Ayikoi Otoo, Esq.
• Hon. Joe Ghartey
• Hon. Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu
• Frank Davies, Esq.
• Hon. O.B. Amoah, Esq.
• Hon. Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah, Esq.
• Hon. Samuel Abu Jinapor, Esq.
• Alex Quainoo, Esq.
• Hanifa Yahaya, Esq.
• Tua Yeboah, Esq.
• Diana Asonaba Dapaah, Esq.
• Hon. Mahama Tiah Kabiru
• Gloria Ofori Boadu, Esq.
• Opoku Nti Ernest, Esq.
• Iddi Muhayu-Deen, Esq. served as Secretary, assisted by Aaron Asiedu-Antwi and Christine Barnes.
• Facilitation was provided by Hon. Hassan Tampuli, Esq. and Hon. Kwame Anyimadu Antwi, who chair our legal committee and Constitution review Committees.
• Coordination was by the Party’s Policy Coordination Committee led by Hon. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Esq.

The Party is grateful to them all for their service. This morning the Party has instructed that its position, taken after considering this report, be announced to the Government, Civil Society groups, Political parties and the nation.

But from the outset, let me give a background of how we got here, because the timelines matter.

• On 19 January 2025, the President appointed an eight-member Constitution Review Committee chaired by Professor H. Kwasi Prempeh. It was inaugurated on 30 January 2025 and consulted the country for nearly a year, including the political parties. The NPP appeared before it and submitted the NPP’s Peduase Report.
• On 22 December 2025, the Independent Constitution Review Committee presented a summary of its recommendations to the President, which was published.
• On 10 February 2026, the Independent Constitution Review Committee submitted its full report, of over 500 pages. That report was not published until 30 July 2026, more than five months later, on the same day the Attorney-General presented the Government Position Paper.
• At the end of August, the NDC Government inaugurated an eleven-member Constitution Review Implementation Committee, chaired by Mrs Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong, with instructions to produce the first amendment Bills by November 2026, and with a referendum planned alongside the 2027 District Assembly elections.

So within weeks of the report being published, a drafting committee is working to a November deadline with the NDC Government’s own zero draft already in hand.

The scale of what is proposed

The 1992 Constitution has 299 Articles. The Committee has recommended amendments to 147 of them. That is 49 per cent, roughly half of the Constitution, plus some 59 entirely new provisions, 206 propositions in all. This is the most far-reaching proposal to alter our constitutional order since the Consultative Assembly of 1992.

Of those 147 recommendations for amendment, by our count the NDC Government has accepted 22 fully and 25 partially. That is 47 recommendations, or 32 per cent. The remaining 100 recommendations, 68 per cent of the Committee’s proposals, are subjects of disagreement between the NDC Government and the independent Committee the President himself appointed. The Trades Union Congress reached a similar conclusion, calculating that the NDC Government rejected 54 per cent of the recommendations. Depending on the method of counting, the statistics differ, but the point remains that a majority of the recommendations of the CRC have been rejected by the NDC Government and instead the NDC Government has replaced the majority of the recommendations of the HK Prempeh Committee with the party/Government’s own position.

The Committee was the independent body that examined the Constitution and engaged every segment of society. On 100 of 147 issues, the NDC Government has now substituted its own preferences for the Committee’s. The first question the country must ask is: whose views are we therefore amending the Constitution to reflect? The NDC’s view or the view of the Independent CRC (Which is akin to the committee of experts in this instance for the purposes of preparing the groundwork for a constitution)

The implementation path announced by the NDC Government

Let me set out precisely the path the NDC Government has announced, from the Attorney-General’s own briefing of 30 July and the inauguration of the Implementation Committee at the end of August, because the approach matters as much as the content.

The NDC Government, speaking through the Attorney General Dominic Ayine, has announced that it has published a Position Paper which accepts, modifies or rejects each of the Committee’s recommendations. A zero draft, reflecting only the recommendations the NDC Government accepted or accepted with modification, has been handed to the eleven-member Constitution Review Implementation Committee.

That Committee has been instructed to draft the amendments or the overhaul of the 1992 Constitution. To draft, not to negotiate the contested provisions.

It will prepare two Bills. The first will amend the non-entrenched provisions under Article 291 and will require a two-thirds majority of all Members of Parliament; the NDC Government wants it before Parliament by November 2026 and enacted by early 2027. The second will amend the entrenched provisions under Article 290 and will go to a referendum alongside the 2027 District Assembly elections, where at least 40 per cent of registered voters must turn out and at least 75 per cent of those voting must vote yes. The content of both Bills will be the Government Position Paper converted into legislative language. The NDC Government has declared the consultation complete.

In other words, the 100 issues in dispute have been resolved in the NDC’s favour, by the NDC Government, and then presented to Parliament and the people for approval, on a timetable that runs to November.

What others have said

The NPP is not alone in raising serious questions about this approach. The Trades Union Congress, on 9 September, warned that the process risks becoming partisan. It said the Committee’s consultations could not be compared with the inclusiveness of the Consultative Assembly that produced the 1992 Constitution, called for the parties, organised labour and other groups to be brought in to build broad agreement, and foresaw the danger of a referendum limited to issues selected by the NDC Government.

On Tuesday, ay the 15th of September 2026, which was the International Day of Democracy, the Citizens’ Platform on Constitutional Reform, more than one hundred civil society organisations, unions and professional bodies convened by CDD-Ghana, Democracy Hub and STAR-Ghana, released its position paper. It agrees with the NDC Government in sixteen areas and asks the NDC Government to reconsider sixteen others. It wants a Roadmap Act, Bills already in Parliament paused, no more than twenty amendments bundled into one referendum question, and civic education funding protected by law.

Its opening words bear repeating: the Constitution ultimately belongs to the people, and if it belongs to the people, then the people must be fully involved in every significant step taken to change it.

The Ghana Bar Association has said the same. Opening the Bar’s Annual General Conference at Ada on 13 September, its President, Mrs Efua Ghartey, said the scale of the proposed amendments could in effect produce a new constitution, that a change of that magnitude deserves the consultation that preceded our previous constitutions, and that a process which runs from a Government-appointed committee to a Government paper to a Government implementation committee does not provide it. The Bar’s call is for a Constituent Assembly to deliberate on the proposals, with its product then going to the people in a referendum under the Constitution.

Before all this, Professor H Kwasi Prempeh, the Chairman of the Government’s Committee, has cautioned against rushing, insisted the process must be free of partisan politics, and said the NDC Government’s position has thrown a spanner in the works.

When organised labour, a hundred civil society organisations, the Ghana Bar Association, the Chairman of the NDC Government’s own Committee and the largest opposition party all say the same thing, the NDC Government should listen.

The position of the New Patriotic Party

**First, **the NPP agrees that some parts of the 1992 Constitution should be amended. We have said so consistently, in the 2010 process and in the Peduase Report. The Constitution has served Ghana well, and a number of its provisions can be improved to strengthen accountability, deepen decentralisation and modernise our institutions.

**Second, **the scale of what the Committee has recommended makes this exercise fundamentally different from any simple amendment. Amendments to 147 of the 299 Articles, together with 59 new provisions, 206 propositions in all, reaching into the executive, the legislature, the judiciary, the independent institutions and local government, are not adjustments to a constitution. They amount to the overhaul of a constitution and, in substance, the enactment of a new one. A change of that magnitude cannot be treated as routine business under Chapter 25, to be carried through in a parliamentary session and a referendum question.

**Third, **the scale of the disagreement between the NDC Government and the Committee compounds the problem. On 100 of the 147 recommendations, 68 per cent of the NDC Government has substituted its own preferences for those of the independent Committee the President himself appointed after a year of national consultation. It withheld the full report for five months, during which Parliament was made to pass the Tribunals Bill in the opposite direction to the Committee’s recommendation. It has declared the consultation closed, instructed its Implementation Committee to draft and not to negotiate, and set a November deadline. There is no table at which the parties, organised labour, the professions or the identifiable groups can discuss the 100 issues in dispute. The NDC Government intends to carry its own version through simply because it has the numbers in Parliament for the non-entrenched provisions, and because it believes it can force its way through with a referendum for the entrenched ones.

Fourth, the New Patriotic Party rejects this approach being pursued by the NDC government in essentially rewriting the 1992 Constitution. A change of this magnitude to the constitutional order of our nation should follow the time-tested path by which Ghana has made every such change: the work of an expert body, deliberated and settled by a broad and representative assembly, and only then given the force of law. That is how it was done in 1969, in 1979 and in 1992, and the NDC Government should respect it now.

Consider the record. In September 1966, the National Liberation Council appointed a Constitutional Commission chaired by the Chief Justice, Edward Akufo-Addo, to draw up proposals for a new constitution. Those proposals did not go straight to promulgation. They went to a Constituent Assembly of about 150 members, drawn from the district and local councils, from some 91 organisations including the Houses of Chiefs, the Bar, the Trades Union Congress, the churches, the universities and women’s groups, and from a small number of NLC nominees. It was that Assembly which approved the text on 16 August 1969 before it was promulgated as the Constitution of the Second Republic.

In 1978, the Supreme Military Council appointed a 23-member Constitutional Commission to prepare a draft. That draft went to a Constituent Assembly chaired by Justice V.C.R.A.C. Crabbe, made up of representatives elected by the district councils, the professional bodies, the chiefs, organised labour, the religious bodies and the state services. The Assembly set aside the Union Government framework it had been handed and produced the multi-party executive presidency that was promulgated as the 1979 Constitution.

In May 1991, the PNDC appointed a nine-member Committee of Experts chaired by Dr S.K.B. Asante. Its report of 31 July 1991 was not enacted as it stood. It became the working document of a Consultative Assembly of 260 seats: 117 members elected by the District Assemblies, 121 nominated by 62 identifiable bodies, and 22 appointed by the PNDC. It was the Assembly’s draft of 31 March 1992, not the experts’ report, that went to the referendum of 28 April 1992 and was approved by 92 per cent of those who voted. Three constitutions, three expert bodies, three representative assemblies, and in every case the work of the experts was deliberated, amended and owned by a broad national body before it acquired the force of law by promulgation or by referendum.

Professor Prempeh’s Committee has completed the expert stage. Proposing to change half (49%) of the current constitution and add 59 new provisions. For all intents and purposes,s that is not a simple amendment. It is akin to the enactment of what will be a new constitution.

What is missing now is the putting up of a proper deliberative body to examine all these and even consider what all other stakeholders, including the ND, have to say about these provisions.

The NDC Government now proposes to skip further deliberation, and to move from a Government drafting room straight to Parliament and the ballot box. No constitution in the history of this Republic has been made or overhauled that way.

Why a mechanism for compromise is needed

The 100 issues in dispute include the shift to a 5 year presidential term, the size of Parliament, whether some new class of MPs should be appointed and not voted for, whether MPs may serve as Ministers, how District Chief Executives are chosen, and the independence and funding of our oversight institutions. These essentially constitute the architecture of our Republic today, not drafting points.

Disagreements on such matters are normal in a democracy. What is not normal is having no mechanism to narrow and resolve it. The Implementation Committee has been told to draft, not to negotiate. Consultation has been declared closed. The parties have no table to sit at. And the clock runs to November.

The NPP holds the view that a constitution overhauled by one party over the objections of all others in the society is not a settled constitution. It will be contested for as long as other groups have the numbers to contest it. That is the road to a constitution that changes with every election, and the NPP does not wish that on Ghana, in opposition or in government.

The call: a Constituent or Consultative Assembly, then a referendum

The NPP therefore calls on the NDC Government to bring a Constituent or Consultative Assembly Bill to Parliament and to establish a proper deliberative Assembly under it, bringing together the segments of society who have always contributed to and must contribute to the final positions whenever an exercise of this nature is being undertaken: the political parties, organised labour, professional bodies, the National House of Chiefs, religious bodies, women’s groups, persons with disabilities, students and youth, the private sector, civil society and the regions. In our view, a Constituent Assembly, established by law, is the single mechanism that answers all three demands now being made of the NDC Government. It delivers the broad agreement across parties, labour and identifiable groups that the TUC has called for. It provides the binding legal pathway and timelines that the Citizens’ Platform has asked for.

And it gives the nation the one platform on which consensus can be built around the 100 issues currently in contest between the NDC Government and the Independent Constitution Review Committee.

Why is this best practice? Because, as I have set out, it is how Ghana has always done it, and Ghanaians accepted the 1992 Constitution overwhelmingly because they could see themselves in the body that wrote it.

Where broad, representative bodies deliberate amendments before a referendum, the amendments hold. Where a party in government drafts alone and asks the people to ratify, the results are narrow, bitter, or reversed.

A Constituent Assembly gives every major constituency a seat and a vote on substance. It provides the forum where the 100 disputed issues can be argued out and settled, so that what goes to the people is a consensus text and not a Government text. And it gives the final product a legitimacy no single party can confer. Its output can then go to a referendum under Article 290. That is the sequence the NPP supports: consultation by the Committee, deliberation by a Constituent Assembly, ratification by the people.

What the NPP will not support

In the absence of a Constituent Assembly or a comparable mechanism for negotiated consensus, any effort to bundle the NDC Government’s preferred amendments into a referendum, as one question or several, will not receive the support of the New Patriotic Party. The NPP will oppose the processes, namely a yes vote at the referendum and the bills in Parliament.

We remind the NDC Government of what Article 290 requires. At a referendum, at least 40 per cent of those entitled to vote must vote, and at least 775 per cent of those voting must vote yes. Those thresholds were written in deliberately, so that the entrenched provisions of our supreme law could never be changed by one political party acting alone. No referendum in the Fourth Republic has cleared them without both major traditions on board. The NDC Government should weigh that arithmetic before spending public money on a referendum whose outcome it cannot secure without the very parties it has declined to bring to the table.

Closing

The Constitution is not the property of the NDC or of the NPP. It belongs to the people of Ghana, and every government must govern under it. That is why its amendment cannot be a partisan exercise. A constitution changed by the party in power, in the manner it prefers, on the timetable it sets, is not a national constitution. It is a party document with a national title.

The NPP wants this exercise to succeed. We want the Committee’s good recommendations to become law, and we want Ghanaians to vote in a referendum confident that what they are voting on has been argued over and agreed by the people they trust to represent them. That confidence cannot be manufactured in a drafting room before November. It is built by bringing people in, not by shutting the door on them.

So we call on the NDC Government: listen to the TUC. Listen to the Citizens’ Platform. Listen to the Chairman of your own Committee. Listen to the chiefs, the professional bodies, the students, the traders and the farmers who told the Committee what they wanted. And listen to the largest opposition party, which comes not to obstruct but to offer a path to a constitution that will outlast all of us.

Set up the Constituent Assembly. Give the country the table it is asking for. Then take the outcome to the people. Do that, and the NPP will be a willing partner. Do otherwise, and you will be asking Ghanaians to ratify a division, not a constitution.