After being read three times and finally being approved by the House, the Security and Intelligence Agencies Bill, 2025, has been formally implemented by the Parliament of Ghana.
Among other things, the bill makes critical changes to Ghana’s security system by changing back the name of the National Investigations Bureau (NIB) to its old name: the Bureau of National Intelligence (BNI);.
In addition, the bill removes the title of Minister for National Security from its current holder and gives that power to another minister working under the President’s authority rather than creating a new ministry.
When the bill was being discussed two weeks ago during the early stages of the process, Hon Muntaka Mohammed-Mubarak, the Interior Minister, explained that changing the name was necessary because there is currently so much confusion among many members of the Ghanaian public when they hear NIB because there are two organizations that use this abbreviation. The first is the National Investment Bank (NIB), which is a banking institution, and the second is the National Investigations Bureau (NIB), which deals with intelligence.
“Unfortunately, when you say NIB, you cannot tell whether you are talking about a bank or a security organization. Therefore, our goal now is to return to the name BNI… Bureau of National Intelligence. He made the statement on the floor of Parliament.
The Minister stated that the National Security Coordinator was given authority by the President, establishing a more direct chain of command which would also mitigate potential conflict between the Minister of National Security and their subordinates.
The Minority opposed the passage of the Bill. They expressed concern that the amendments were consolidating too much authority in one person and that it may undermine parliamentary oversight of the law.
Alexander Afenyo-Markin, the Minority Leader, indicated that granting excessive authority to the National Security Coordinator through the bill’s provisions was inappropriate as the accompanying memorandum does not provide evidence that the current structure under Act 1030 has failed to produce results.
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