Shaibu Mahama

Shaibu Mahama is a Ghanaian lawyer, accountant and politician born on 15 October 1970 who serves as the Member of Parliament for the Daboya/Mankarigu constituency in the Savannah Region. A member of the National Democratic Congress who represents one of the Northern Region's historically significant fishing communities along the White Volta, he brings to Parliament a professional formation that is unusually broad, spanning accountancy, law and legislative administration, having worked inside Parliament itself before winning a seat in it.

Education

Mahama's academic career spans more than three decades of sustained qualification upgrading. He attended Domingo Secondary School for his O-levels in 1988 and Navrongo Secondary School for his A-levels in 1990. He obtained a Diploma in Education from the University of Cape Coast followed by a Bachelor of Commerce from the same institution in 1997, giving him a dual qualification in education and commerce that shaped his early career. He proceeded to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, where he earned a Bachelor of Laws in June 2008, qualifying him for admission to the Bar. He was called to the Ghana Bar in October 2010 after completing the professional qualification at the Ghana School of Law. His earlier international business qualification came from Leicester Business School at De Montfort University in the United Kingdom, where he obtained a Master of Business Administration in 2002. Most recently, he completed a Master of Laws at the University of Ghana in February 2025, adding a postgraduate law research degree to his already substantial qualifications portfolio.

Professional career

Before entering Parliament, Mahama built a career that straddled the private sector and the public administration of the legislature itself. He worked as a Brewery Accountant and later as a Management Information Reporting Manager and Purchase-to-Pay Manager at Ghana Breweries Limited and Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited, roles that placed him at the centre of financial reporting and accounts payable operations within one of Ghana's largest beverage manufacturing businesses. He then moved into legal practice as a Legal Associate at Justking and Associates before joining the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority as a Legal Officer. His most significant pre-parliamentary post was as Assistant Director of Legislative Affairs in the Office of the Speaker of Parliament, a role that gave him an insider's knowledge of how the national legislature functions and what the work of an MP actually entails at the institutional level.

Parliamentary service

He serves as Chairperson of the Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee, one of Parliament's most substantive oversight bodies, and sits on the Appointments Committee and the Youth and Sports Committee. His chairmanship of Constitutional and Legal Affairs directly leverages his LLB, BL, MBA and LLM qualifications and his experience in legislative administration, positioning him as one of the more credentialled chairs of a legal committee in the Ninth Parliament. Daboya/Mankarigu is a constituency in the Savannah Region whose communities depend on fishing, farming and the riverside economy of the White Volta, a constituency whose development challenges Mahama is equipped to address through both his legal expertise and his knowledge of the parliamentary institution he now sits in as an elected member.

Legacy

Shaibu Mahama's career arc from brewery accountant to Parliament's internal legal affairs staff to elected MP and committee chair gives his parliamentary service a continuity of institutional engagement with the Ghanaian legislature that few of his NDC colleagues in the Ninth Parliament can match.