"Is it not political intrigue to give rights with the right and take them away with the left?" Dominic asked the guest lecturer during the RTI class. How was he answered? And how would you answer him?
Act 989 does two things at once: it grants a right to information, and it withholds a defined set of exemptions from that right. Reading the exemptions as proof that the right is not genuine, misses why they exist: they are narrow, and they can be overridden wherever the public interest demands disclosure. In this paper, I argue that this combination reflects a deliberate balance between openness and a few real competing interests.
The Lecturer's Answer
During the RTI class, Dominic asked the guest lecturer whether it was not political intrigue to give rights with the right hand and take them away with the left. The lecturer refused to accept that framing, arguing that the question had to be tested against enforcement rather than the text of the exemptions alone. The record shows real enforcement, not a paper right: by mid-2025 the Commission had imposed penalties of roughly GHS5.6 million on nearly sixty non-compliant institutions, with more than GHS2.1 million of that still unpaid,13 and recent sanctions have reached the Ghana Education Service and the Economic and Organized Crime Office for withholding information without lawful basis.14
I agree with him. An exemption existing is not evidence of intrigue. Every access to information regime permits withholding where disclosure would cause a defined harm, and Act 989 goes further than most by making the willful disclosure of exempt information a criminal offence, punishable by up to three years' imprisonment.15 The same statute that forces institutions to open their files also protects the narrow category it lets them keep closed, which points to a considered scheme. What separates a genuine right from a hollow one is whether an independent body compels compliance when institutions overreach, and the RTIC's enforcement record does exactly that.
Article 21(1)(f) of the Constitution guarantees a right to information subject to qualifications necessary in a democratic society,16 and Act 989 gives that guarantee practical shape. It requires public institutions to disclose information proactively and on application, while withholding a defined list of categories in Sections 5 to 16, covering matters such as Cabinet deliberations, law enforcement and national security whose disclosure would cause identifiable harm.17 What the Act gives is a working procedure: Section 18 sets a fourteen-day decision period, with a route to internal review and then review by the Commission itself.18 What it withholds is conditional rather than fixed. Section 17 overrides any exemption where it would conceal unlawful conduct or where the benefit of disclosure clearly outweighs the harm.19 Sections 70 and 71 let the Commission compel compliance and penalize institutions that refuse.20 Even a valid exemption expires after thirty years.21 Information functions as a form of power, and a democratic state widens access to it while protecting only the interests that open access would damage.
The RTIC could still do more to make this record visible. Publishing enforcement statistics more regularly would keep the Act's bite in public view and pursuing the GHS2.1 million in unpaid penalties more assertively would strengthen deterrence.22
None of this supports Dominic's suggestion of political intrigue. The Act grants a right, defines its exemptions narrowly, overrides them wherever secrecy would shield wrongdoing, and backs the arrangement with an enforcement body willing to fine institutions that resist. What is given with the right hand is not, in the end, withdrawn with the left.