Martin Amidu has raised fresh constitutional concerns over the government’s proposed Security and Intelligence Agencies Bill, 2025, describing it as a hollow piece of legislation that fails to meet the basic requirements for introducing new laws in Parliament.
According to Amidu, the bill’s accompanying explanatory memorandum does not satisfy Article 106(2)(a) of the 1992 Constitution, which demands that every bill must include a detailed account of its policy, guiding principles, the defects in existing law, and the remedies it proposes.
“The six-paragraph introduction of the memorandum, which supposedly outlines the objective and purpose of the bill, fails to identify any actual defect in Act 1030,” he said. “Instead, it merely repeats the government’s intention to ‘re-enact’ the existing law to suit its policy direction. That is constitutionally inadequate.”
Amidu argued that the 2020 Act, which was a bipartisan re-enactment of the 1996 Act, had already modernized Ghana’s security framework to ensure democratic control and effective coordination. He said the current bill offers no new justification beyond the government’s wish to change “policy direction.”
He described the justification as “pretentious and shallow,” adding that “re-enacting an entire security law without identifying defects in the current one amounts to legislative recklessness.”
Amidu emphasized that the Constitution does not allow Parliament to pass bills based on political preference or administrative convenience.
“Law-making in a democracy is not a matter of personal or political expediency. It requires adherence to constitutional procedure and respect for institutional checks and balances,” he argued.
In his view, the bill’s failure to articulate clear defects and remedies exposes it as “a political instrument rather than a policy necessity.”
He urged Parliament to reject the bill in its current form, insisting that it “violates the Constitution’s spirit of transparency, accountability, and legal coherence.”
