On the 15th of October, 2020, Ghana’s then Special Prosecutor Mr. Martin Amidu; enabled by Law under the Akufo-Addo-Bawumia led regime to fight corruption and corruption-related activities, published at his behest, a 64-page corruption risk assessment on the infamous and botched Agyapa Royalties Deal.
In that report was a compendium of suspected incidences of corruption. This was taken by the government with a pinch of salt. It was obvious at this point that the Special Prosecutor’s corruption risk assessment on the deal and, his subsequent uncompromising description of President Akufo-Addo as the “Mother Serpent of Corruption”, whom he could not envisage can fight corruption in the past, present or future, touched a sensitive spot at the nerve center of the Jubilee House!
That triggered a chain of back and forth correspondences from Martin Amidu’s quarters on one hand and that of the Presidency on the other hand, authored by Executive Secretary Nana Bediatuo Asante and Director of Communications, Eugene Arhin respectively.
The strained issues, differences and relationship were not resolved before the general elections of 2020. According to Mr. Arhin, the government had an election to win and so the matter was suspended for later. That later explanation never came. This gravely affected the gains of the party in power at the time. Although the New Patriotic Party won the elections in 2020, they did so by the skin of their teeth and lost many votes and parliamentary seats.
In spite of all these challenges and red flags, the government hinted of a reconsideration of the Agyapa deal in its 2022 budget presentation to Parliament. Public consultation was still poor and there was no clarity as to whether the concerns were going to be addressed, once the deal was returning to Parliament.
In the Akan language, “Agyapa” means a good father. So, why couldn’t this particular father be good to his children by being open and transparent? This rhetorical question leads us to ask: “what really is the Agyapa Royalties Deal then?” Well in a nutshell, in August 2020, the government of Ghana thought of selling the majority of its future gold royalties from mining leases to an offshore company. Agyapa Royalties Limited was said to have been registered in the notoriously secretive British Crown Dependency of Jersey in the British Islands. The government was to sell 49 per cent of the shares of this company through a public offering and keep a 51 per cent stake.
In the eyes of the government, this was an “innovative financing solution” to help ease the country’s debt crisis. Unfortunately, there were critical concerns of how the arrangement valued the gold rights at far less than what they were worth. This was criticised from all quarters. The whole nation was talking about gold as we are doing presently. The big question was: are we really getting our gold’s worth?
Now, fellow Ghanaians, it should be made abundantly clear that the Agyapa deal did not drop from the skies. It was carefully engineered!
Here’s how. Remember how we were evangelized to, in a ridiculous fast and furious fashion, into believing that the economic messiahs: Ofori-Atta, Adu-Boahen, Abena Osei-Asare, Osafo-Maafo and company had finally found the magic wand to fix our gold story into greater glory?
The magic? Simply mortgage our gold for decades. Hurriedly. Cheaply. Clandestinely. Quietly. In British tax haven, Jersey.
Yes, Jersey oo! Not Kumasi, not Obuasi, not Tarkwa, nor Kenyasi but an offshore island famous for hiding money, not mining gold. We were told this was an innovation. Of course everything was, including the age-old barter trade look alike code-named Gold4Oil?
Permit me to digress a bit and ask, how cheap and available did oil become after giving off our gold? We can decide to talk about the pros and cons of Gold4Oil and mirror that against Goldbod and what the losses and gains have been so far, later.
Meanwhile, the only innovation the people saw in Agyapa was how conflict of interest, rigging, unmerited financial inflows, money laundering, state capture and zero transparency had been packaged and inter-woven as a super-model financial engineering, right under our noses and on our blind side.
Then came Martin Amidu, the one-man-corruption-risk-assessor who decided to read the fine print of the deal. His 2020 assessment didn’t mince words. It flogged the deal bare and made everything clear. According to him, the whole sweet deal was set on the altar of illegality, seasoned with pure, unblemished ‘ahantancracy’ and ‘anibrecracy’.
Remember the gurus who added Kofi’s 15 years, Ama’s 15 years Kojo’s 20 years and Kwaku’s 30 years and announced to us that they have 80 years of combined experience in stock market or asset management? Those self-acclaimed gurus labelled the warnings of their employers — the citizenry as ‘unnecessary disputations.’
Whenever the masses warned, they hissed, puckered and smacked their lips with impunity. When questioned, they lectured with long-winding-sentences composed with fluent and lucid English that a vast majority of the citizenry could not understand.
Suffice to say that the things that blindly and powerfully dominate some people of power many times subtly, make them think and insist that some of their misdirected instincts are sacrosanct.
This often ushers those they lead into tyrannized zones before they eat a humble pie to make an unwilling u-turn! That imperious urge, has proven to be what mars the chances of developmental advancement in many cases. The Agyapa deal and its sponsors, in it’s unsavoury form at the time, was no different.
In the end, greed and self-centeredness drove us straight into a ditch. We returned home with bleeding noses, empty pockets, shameful faces and a deal that was not only nonsensical, but gloriously impractical. Awwwww!
All this while, we had already parted with millions of cash that we did not have, in search of cash that we did not get. The underwhelming bit was that, these acts of recklessness were done without the requisite approvals with all the so-called experienced stock market or asset management gurus and their transaction advisors (lawyers) at post. Did any of today’s Apostles of accountability who were involved (either deeply or remotely) demand for accountability then as they are doing now to win the populist votes? Did anybody feel obliged, out of respect for the people to apologise for shamefully leading us all astray? No!
On the back of these happenings, the government hinted of a reconsideration of the Agyapa deal in its 2022 budget presentation to parliament. President Nana Akufo-Addo immediately instructed authorities to review the botched transaction documents and re-table the proposal for the appropriate approvals.
Public consultation was still poor and there was no general clarity as to whether the concerns raised were going to be addressed, once the deal was returning to Parliament.
The fact is, we all know that every time a person imposes his or her instincts unreasonably upon others, unhappiness tags along. The results of the 2020 and 2024 general elections bear me witness.
Post 2020, Akufo-Addo and Bawumia got four more to do more with a hung parliament. And in 2024, went into opposition with the most humiliating electoral defeat in Ghana’s political history.
As Amidu put it after slicing the deal with his double-edged sword: “All the parties to the Mandate Agreement are deemed to have known the law but ignored it with impunity in signing and implementing the Mandate Agreement which is null and void ab initio as violating the Public Financial Management Act, 2016 (Act 921) and the Public Procurement Authority Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663) as amended…”
In short, the lawyers and law makers among them knew the law. They saw the law. And they ignored the law with careless abandon and retorted in Ayitey Powers’ voice “what can come, can come.”
May this be a learning curve for all our sakes and may such miscalculated steps and attempts never be our portion as a nation.
We now have a chance and choice to do right with GoldBod — To get the best out of our gold for our collective good and progress. We have the opportunity to draw lessons from Gold4Oil. Goldbod, therefore, cannot be beyond reproach and must not be seen otherwise.
By all means, it can be criticised and questioned to provide answers. The managers at GoldBod are obliged to open their doors and books and to seek for the best for us. If they get it wrong, they are wrong. If they get it right, they are right.
There is no point in trying to manufacture and foist a narrative on an institution of that nature because of political reasons. You know why? If the Goldbod model proves to be right, it will transcend political regimes and known politically exposed persons who may rise to the helm of affairs.
In the long run it is the nation and her people that will benefit, not political parties that will come and go!
Tswa, ni omanye aba!
