The Minority Caucus in Parliament has called for the immediate withdrawal of the 2025 District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) Utilisation Guidelines, describing them as unconstitutional, illegal, and a direct threat to Ghana’s decentralised governance system.
Addressing a press conference in Accra, Minority Chief Whip and Member of Parliament for Nsawam-Adoagyiri, Frank Annoh-Dompreh, framed the issue not as a partisan dispute but as a national constitutional emergency that strikes at the heart of local governance, parliamentary authority, and public financial accountability.
According to the Minority, the controversy arises from guidelines issued by the Ministry of Local Government and approved by Cabinet, which, they argue, fundamentally contradict the 2025 DACF Formula duly approved by Parliament of Ghana.
Under the 1992 Constitution, Article 252 vests exclusive authority in Parliament to determine how the DACF is shared among the country’s 261 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).
The Minority insists that this authority is not advisory but binding, and any deviation from it amounts to a breach of constitutional order.
They explained that Parliament had already approved a data-driven 2025 DACF Formula, which allocated about GH¢7.51 billion for the fiscal year using a scientifically structured model based on equality, needs, and service pressure indicators.
This formula, they noted, prioritises deprived districts by factoring in infrastructure gaps in health, education, water, sanitation, and roads, ensuring equitable development across the country.
However, the 2025 Ministerial Guidelines, the Minority said, effectively redesign this allocation system by imposing fixed national spending percentages—such as 25% for 24-hour economy markets, 10% each for CHPS compounds, school blocks, boreholes and sanitation, 5% for administration, and 20% for legacy projects.
These mandatory percentages, they stressed, do not appear anywhere in the parliamentary formula and were never debated or approved by Parliament, making them, in their words, “substitutive, not supplementary.”
From the Minority’s perspective, this shift represents executive overreach. While the Local Governance Act, 2016 (Act 936) allows a minister to issue guidelines for implementation, it does not empower the minister to redesign allocation structures, impose new national priorities, or override parliamentary weightings. By doing so, they argue, the Executive has acted ultra vires—beyond its legal authority—undermining Article 252 of the Constitution and weakening the autonomy of local government.
The Minority warned that the consequences go beyond legal theory. They argued that uniform national spending templates ignore the real differences between deprived rural districts and relatively resourced urban ones, replacing equity with rigidity.
They also cautioned that local autonomy is being eroded, as district assemblies are forced into centrally prescribed projects rather than being guided by their Medium-Term Development Plans. In addition, they raised concerns that the guidelines blur governance roles by drawing Members of Parliament into approval processes that constitutionally belong to the executive arm of local government administration.
Central to their demand is the outright withdrawal or fundamental revision of the 2025 DACF Guidelines to bring them in line with the parliamentary formula.
They called on Parliament to reassert its constitutional authority, on the DACF Administrator to implement only the approved formula, and on MMDAs to resist being compelled into what they describe as unconstitutional expenditure patterns. Civil society and the media, they added, must sustain public oversight to protect decentralisation.
Beyond the guidelines themselves, the Minority linked the issue to a broader crisis in DACF financing, pointing to long-standing problems of capping, under-transfer, and arrears.
They cited constitutional provisions that require not less than 5% of Ghana’s total national revenue to be paid into the DACF and referenced the Supreme Court’s 2019 ruling in Benjamin Komla Kpodo & Richard Quashigah v. Attorney-General, which declared that neither Parliament nor the Minister for Finance has the power to reduce or cap this constitutional minimum.
Despite this, the Minority said DACF transfers have consistently fallen below the 5% threshold, with significant under-allocations in recent years.
They also highlighted persistent arrears, noting that many disbursements in 2024 were largely payments of old debts dating back to 2014–2016 rather than fresh compliance.
They accused successive administrations of failing to fully honour constitutional obligations to district assemblies, arguing that unpaid DACF arrears—estimated in billions of cedis—translate directly into stalled projects, unpaid contractors, and delayed development in communities across the country.
They further contrasted DACF delays with substantial releases to other statutory and constitutional funds, such as GETFund and the National Health Insurance Fund in early 2025, arguing that this reflects distorted fiscal priorities where a constitutionally guaranteed fund for local development is treated as secondary.
In response, the Minority proposed far-reaching reforms, including an automatic, revenue-based computation mechanism for DACF transfers, a structured national arrears liquidation plan, strengthened parliamentary oversight, administrative reforms within the Ministry of Finance, and full transparency through public disclosure of DACF inflows and transfers.
They also warned that constitutional litigation remains an option if administrative compliance fails.
Framing their position as a defence of democratic governance rather than political opposition, the Minority insisted that the withdrawal of the 2025 DACF Guidelines is essential to protect the supremacy of Parliament, the integrity of decentralisation, and the constitutional rights of districts to their guaranteed share of national revenue.
They concluded that the DACF is not a discretionary policy tool but a constitutional entitlement and warned that any attempt to redirect, cap, or redesign it outside parliamentary authority represents a direct threat to the constitutional democracy and local development architecture.
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