Hon. Mahama Ayariga has assured President John Dramani Mahama that he and Dr Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings will not disappoint him in the ministries they have just taken charge of.
The newly sworn-in Minister for Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs delivered the pledge on behalf of both ministers at Jubilee House in Accra on Saturday after both took the oath of office.
His remarks followed a detailed charge from the President covering decentralisation, urban disorder, chieftaincy, illegal mining and climate policy. Ayariga’s response was structured as an acknowledgement of that charge rather than a programme of his own.
The framing Hon. Mahama Ayariga chose was deliberate. He told the President that he and his colleague had listened carefully to his indication of exactly what he expects of them as Ministers of State and how he expects the assignment to be executed, and gave an assurance that they would do exactly that.
He thanked the President for the confidence placed in them and for the assignment to what he described as two very important ministries.
The audience included the Vice President, the Chief of Staff, serving Ministers of State, staff of the Office of the President, Members of Parliament, traditional rulers, queen mothers, religious leaders, family members and journalists.
The Reset Agenda as the Measure
Ayariga tied the work of both ministries directly to the commitments Mahama made during the 2024 campaign. He undertook that they would work to realise the promises the President made to Ghanaians in his pledge to reset the country.
He went further on method, saying the President’s style of governance and his manner of relating to the ordinary Ghanaian would serve as their guiding post in how they conduct themselves in office. He also committed both ministers to continuing to take guidance from the President and the Vice President in the running of their portfolios.
The point he treated as most important came last in that sequence. Responsibility, as the President had indicated, is ultimately owed to the ordinary Ghanaian, and Ayariga said the ordinary Ghanaian would therefore be at the forefront of everything the two ministers do.
The formulation echoes the President’s own language earlier in the ceremony, when he said public office is a privilege rather than a right and requires holders to place the national interest above personal convenience, political consideration and sectional interest.
A Specific Promise on Local Governance
On his own portfolio, Hon Mahama Ayariga made a commitment that can be tested. Ghana’s cities, municipalities, metropolises, districts, zones and units, he said, would be better governed under the President’s leadership.
The list runs down the full structure of Ghana’s decentralised administration, from metropolitan assemblies to the unit committees that sit at its base.
It answers directly to the charge President Mahama had just issued, which asked the minister to make decentralisation meaningful to citizens and to ensure that metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies become more accountable, financially disciplined and responsive.
Mahama Ayariga had set out the mechanism two days earlier at his vetting, telling the Appointments Committee he intends to introduce a digital system covering property rates, market tolls and other internally generated funds, monitored centrally so that assemblies can be held to account for what they collect and what they do with it.
Drawing on His Own Time at Environment
The most substantive part of the response concerned the other ministry. Mahama Ayariga said that working with his colleague, the two of them would surmount what is considered insurmountable in the restoration of Ghana’s environment.
He grounded the claim in his own record, noting that he has previously served as Minister for Environment, Science and Technology, which he said makes it straightforward for him to understand where he is supposed to collaborate with Agyeman-Rawlings.
The President had made that collaboration an explicit instruction minutes earlier, arguing that sanitation, land use planning, waste management, climate resilience and the protection of natural resources all require the two ministries to work together rather than separately.
President Mahama had also observed that the two have served together in Parliament for years and that their working relationship is good, and said he expected them to draw on it.
What the Pledge Will Be Measured Against
Hon Mahama Ayariga closed by thanking the President again for the confidence placed in them and giving the undertaking that they would not disappoint. The assurance arrives with a demanding set of markers already public.
The President has asked for accountable and financially disciplined assemblies, an end to unchecked spatial planning failures, sanitation problems, congestion and encroachment on public spaces, and impartiality in handling chieftaincy and religious affairs.
Speaker Alban Bagbin, approving the nomination in Parliament on Thursday, told Ayariga he had a very tall mountain to climb. Hon Mahama Ayariga arrives at the ministry from the Majority Leadership of Parliament, which he vacated in the reshuffle and which has passed to James Agalga, MP for Builsa North.
He represents Bawku Central, a constituency at the centre of a long-running chieftaincy conflict, and now holds the national brief for chieftaincy itself.
The two ministries he spoke for on Saturday have been without substantive heads since the Ghana Armed Forces helicopter crash of 6 August 2025 in the case of Environment, and since the reshuffle of 7 August this year in the case of Local Government.
Whether the assurance holds will be judged in the assemblies and the river basins rather than in the reception hall at Jubilee House.
READ ALSO: From Kayayei to Factory Workers: Mahama Says Northshore Saving Northern Girls
