Parliament Must Complete the Equal Citizenship Journey Begun in 1996

The Council of State has advised against the bipartisan Constitution Amendment Bill, 2025, which seeks to remove the remaining constitutional restrictions on dual citizens holding certain public offices notwithstanding the President's repeated support for the reform.

The affected offices include Member of Parliament, the Executive (Ministers, Secretary to the Cabinet, Ambassadors), members of constitutional commissions, founding members, executives and leaders of political parties, and the heads of key security services.

The Council's objections are not new. They are the very arguments advanced in 1996 against Act 527, which finally allowed Ghanaians to hold dual citizenship. Parliament rejected those arguments then. Thirty years later, experience has rejected them too.

Act 527 proved to be one of Parliament's most farsighted constitutional reforms. Parliament now has an opportunity to complete that unfinished journey by removing the remaining constitutional disabilities attached to dual citizenship.

The objections can be grouped into five broad themes: loyalty, security, trustworthiness, competition, and constitutional process. Each deserves careful examination.

1. The Loyalty Myth
The central claim is that dual citizens owe divided allegiance and therefore cannot be trusted with sensitive public office. This argument proves too much and too little.

It proves too much because, if foreign connections create unconstitutional divided loyalties, many mono-citizens would also be disqualified: those with foreign spouses, children abroad, foreign businesses, permanent residence elsewhere, overseas investments, or substantial foreign assets.

It proves too little because there is no empirical evidence anywhere that dual citizens, as a class, discharge public duties less faithfully than mono-citizens.

Indeed, the only Ghanaian example remotely resembling divided loyalty cuts the other way. In the Soussoudis exchange, the Ghanaians swapped were mono-citizens reportedly regarded as valuable CIA assets. Citizenship did not determine loyalty there, and it never has.

Public officers are not governed by passports. They are governed by oaths of office, professional ethics, conflict-of-interest rules, criminal sanctions, security vetting, and constitutional accountability.

We routinely trust foreign nationals to coach the Black Stars, even against their own countries. We also proudly field dual citizens such as Jordan Ayew and Antoine Semenyo without questioning whether they will suddenly betray Ghana on the pitch. If professional duty overcomes nationality in sport, why should we assume the opposite in public service?

The Constitution should presume loyalty until conduct proves otherwise, not presume disloyalty because of citizenship.

2. The Security Scare
The familiar hypothetical is: What if Ghana goes to war with the United Kingdom or the United States? Constitutions are not built on imagined wars.

If speculative risks justify constitutional exclusion, then almost anyone could be barred from office. Poor people may steal. Rich people may avoid military service. Parents with foreign-educated children may favour foreign interests. Businesspeople may protect foreign investments. Party loyalists may place party above country.

The Constitution does not manage hypothetical risks through blanket exclusions. It manages real risks through vetting, conflict-of-interest rules, intelligence screening, removal procedures, and criminal law.

If these safeguards are insufficient, strengthen them. Do not punish an entire class of citizens because of imagined future scenarios.

Indeed, if we are free to speculate, why not speculate that dual citizens, with ties to multiple societies, may be uniquely positioned to prevent conflict rather than be conflicted by it? Constitutional law should not be built on speculation either way.

3. The Trust Deficit
Several objections are really variations of the same suspicion: dual citizens will steal public money and flee, want to "eat their cake and have it," are not fully Ghanaian, cannot serve two masters, or can simply renounce another citizenship if they truly love Ghana.

None withstands scrutiny.
People do not become corrupt because they have two passports. Mono-citizens have stolen from the State, fled Ghana, and betrayed public trust. No one proposes banning mono-citizens from office because some mono-citizens have stolen. We punish the guilty, not the innocent. The same principle should apply here.

Nor does another passport provide immunity. Extradition treaties, mutual legal assistance agreements, and the international law principle of dominant nationality ensure that criminal accountability does not end at the airport. A second passport is not a "get out of jail free" card.

The "cake" argument misunderstands the issue entirely. This Bill is about public service, not privilege. It creates no entitlement to office. It simply removes a constitutional disability and allows merit, elections, and appointments to determine who serves.

Nor is there such a thing as a "fractional Ghanaian." A dual citizen remains a full Ghanaian, with one vote, the same constitutional duties, the same taxes, the same obligations, and the same stake in Ghana's future.

The claim that a citizen cannot "serve two masters" is equally misplaced. Citizenship is not a master-servant relationship. It is a reciprocal relationship of rights and duties. Ironically, some who invoke this biblical metaphor have no difficulty "serving" more than one spouse.

Finally, renunciation is neither simple nor universal. Some countries prohibit it altogether. Others impose substantial financial costs, exit taxes, or the loss of property, professional opportunities, or family connections. In some countries, citizenship is a prerequisite for owning land or holding certain offices. In others, renunciation is legally impossible.

More fundamentally, if someone is presumed untrustworthy today because of a second passport, why should a certificate of renunciation transform that person into a patriot tomorrow? Character is not issued by the Passport Office.

4. Competition Is Not a Constitutional Wrong
Some fear dual citizens will take jobs or out-compete local politicians. Competition is not a constitutional wrong; it is the essence of democracy. Public office exists to serve the public, not to protect monopolies.

This Bill guarantees no appointment. It guarantees no election. It merely enlarges the pool from which Ghana may choose its best people.

Indeed, most affected positions are highly professional or technical. Ghana should welcome the best doctors, engineers, judges, diplomats, academics, accountants, scientists, administrators, and public servants available, not artificially exclude them.

No one argues that Jordan Ayew or Antoine Semenyo should be excluded from the Black Stars because they are dual citizens. We want Ghana's best representing Ghana.

Some respond that football is different because it is not public service. That misses the point. The issue is not the nature of the job but the assumption of divided loyalty. If dual citizenship does not undermine professional commitment on the football field, why should we assume it does in a courtroom, hospital, university, ministry, or Parliament?

The same principle should govern public service.

5. The Constitutional Arguments
The Council argues that the framers deliberately imposed these restrictions. That is only half the story. The framers also prohibited dual citizenship altogether. Parliament corrected that mistake in 1996 because experience showed the prohibition was misguided.

The framers likewise made Articles 8(2) and 94(2)(a) non-entrenched, deliberately authorizing future Parliaments to amend them. Respecting the framers therefore means respecting both what they enacted and the amendment process they created.

It has also been suggested that repealing Article 94(2)(a) would amount to an indirect amendment of Article 62(c), which requires a President to be qualified to be elected a Member of Parliament.

That argument misunderstands both constitutional drafting and constitutional amendment. Article 62(c) is not being amended. Its text remains exactly the same. It simply continues to incorporate, as it always has, the qualifications for membership of Parliament as they exist from time to time. When Parliament lawfully amends Article 94(2)(a), it changes the qualifications for MPs, not the text or meaning of Article 62(c).

Constitutions frequently contain cross-references that operate dynamically. Every amendment to a cross-referenced provision affects the operation of the referring provision without amending its text. That is not an indirect amendment; it is simply how incorporation by reference works.

If every amendment to a cross-referenced provision were treated as an indirect amendment of every provision that refers to it, constitutional amendment would become practically impossible. Otherwise, every amendment to a cross-referenced provision would automatically become an amendment of every provision that refers to it, a proposition unknown to constitutional law.

The Council also argues that this reform should await broader constitutional review. But that broader constitutional conversation has already taken place. The Constitution Review Commission, after extensive nationwide consultation, reached substantially the same conclusion embodied in this Bill.

That recommendation is reinforced by Ghana's legislative experience. A substantially similar Bill had earlier been introduced in the Eighth Parliament. The then Council of State unanimously advised that it should proceed, and Parliament approved it at Second Reading. The Bill was only one stage away from passage when Parliament was dissolved.

Nothing material has changed in the Constitution since then. What has changed is the advice. The present debate is therefore not about a clear constitutional prohibition. It is about constitutional interpretation and legislative choice.

There is a further constitutional difficulty with the Council's position. It assumes that the existing catalogue of restricted offices reflects a fixed constitutional principle. It does not.

The category of "sensitive public office" has never been defined according to any coherent constitutional principle. The catalogue of affected offices reflects legislative line-drawing rather than any consistent constitutional conception of national security or divided allegiance.

The Constitution excludes dual citizens from serving as Members of Parliament, Ministers, Secretary to the Cabinet, Ambassadors, members of Constitutional Commissions (such as the Electoral Commission, the National Commission for Civic Education, the Public Services Commission, and the Lands Commission), founding members, executives and leaders of political parties, and the heads of some of the security services, including the Inspector-General of Police, the Chief of the Defence Staff, and the Director of Immigration.

Yet the distinctions quickly become difficult to defend. A dual citizen may serve as Chief of Staff but not as a Minister. A dual citizen may lead a major state-owned enterprise but not serve on the Lands Commission. A dual citizen may sit in the Regional House of Chiefs but not on the Regional Lands Commission.

These are not distinctions dictated by constitutional principle; they are legislative choices. Legislative choices are, by their nature, capable of legislative revision.

Indeed, the Supreme Court has already narrowed the list, holding that several of the listed exclusions were unconstitutional, including those relating to the Chief Justice, Justices of the Supreme Court, the Commissioner of the Value Added Tax Service, the Director-General of the Prisons Service, the Chief Fire Officer, Chief Directors of Ministries, and Colonels in the Armed Forces. By the same reasoning, the restriction on appointment as Special Prosecutor also falls away.

There is therefore nothing constitutionally sacred or immutable about this list. None of the fears that justified those exclusions materialized after the Supreme Court invalidated them just as none of the fears materialized after the passage of Act 527 in 1996.

Parliament is not dismantling a constitutional principle. It is revisiting a legislative classification that the Constitution itself made amendable and the Supreme Court has already partially dismantled. The present Bill simply continues that constitutional evolution.

Let us now turn to the Top Ten reasons for passing the Bill.

1. It strengthens remittances and encourages return migration. Remittances reached a record $7.8 billion in 2025. These record remittances are a tangible expression of economic patriotism and ongoing commitment to the country.

2. It enables Ghana to draw on its full brain trust. This is important because Ghana is a net exporter of skilled labour.

3. It aligns our public-office rules with our longstanding rhetoric about the diaspora.

4. It gives practical meaning to equal citizenship. The Constitution imposes a duty on all citizens to defend the Constitution and it is important that all citizens be allowed to participate equally in the political community, unless otherwise disqualified for a wrongful conduct. Citizens who owe the same duties to the Republic should not be excluded from public service absent a compelling constitutional justification.

5. It strengthens democratic choice. The Bill guarantees no election or appointment. It simply removes an unnecessary constitutional disability and allows the electorate and appointing authorities to choose from the widest possible pool of qualified Ghanaian citizens. Those who believe dual citizens should not hold elective office remain free to express that preference at the ballot box or through the political process. That is how democracy works. Constitutional disqualification should be reserved for compelling constitutional reasons, not used to predetermine electoral or appointive choices. Democracies are strengthened by expanding choice, not by narrowing eligibility without compelling constitutional justification.

6. It reflects international practice. The rest of Africa (Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Botswana, etc.) have moved in that direction.

7. It replaces suspicion with the constitutional presumption of loyalty and innocence.

8. It recognizes that genuine conflicts should be managed through conflict-of-interest rules, not blanket constitutional exclusion.

9. It treats public office as a question of merit rather than citizenship labels.

10. Most of the affected offices are professional offices. Their holders swear oaths, follow professional codes, and are accountable to law. Their professional judgment, not the number of passports they hold, is what protects the Republic.

The Bottom Line is that a passport does not make a patriot. A single citizenship does not guarantee loyalty. Dual citizenship does not prove betrayal.

What protects Ghana is not mono-citizenship but integrity, competence, transparency, professional ethics, robust accountability, and the inclusion of every Ghanaian willing and able to serve.

That is the promise of equal citizenship. It is the vision the President has consistently championed. It is the vision that is reflected by the CRC’s report. It is the spirit that is reflected by the bipartisan Constitution Amendment Bill, 2025.

Parliament now has the opportunity to complete the constitutional journey that began with Act 527 nearly thirty years ago. Doing so would not depart from the Constitution. It would give effect to the Constitution's own amendment design by revising a legislative classification that no longer serves a coherent constitutional purpose.

Yɛde post no bɛto hɔ. Yɛnyɛ comprehension consultants.

Da Yie!