The Alliance of Civil Society Organizations working in Extractive, Anti-Corruption and Good Governance have said they are not in support of the reassessment of the Agyapa deal by the current Parliament following the detection of some anomalies by the Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu.
Speaking with the media, member of the Civil Society group and the Country Director for Send Ghana, George Osei Bimbeh, said the deal should only be analyzed by the eighth parliament adding that, the current Parliament might fail to properly scrutinize the agreement should it attempt to re-visit it for the needed auditing.
He supported his argument with the fact that, with many of the parliamentarians canvassing votes for the 2020 elections, they will not be able to properly relook into the deal.
“We are not in good terms in terms of the time on had in parliament. Many of them are in the nuke and crannies of this country canvassing for votes. We do not have the massive attendance in the house and so I am a bit skeptical in terms of the kind of work that will go into it and I think that if anything at all, it shouldn’t be considered the lifetime of this parliament.”
Following the assessment report of the Agyapa Royalties deal submitted to the President by the Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu. President Akufo-Addo upon receipt of the report gave a directive to the Finance Minister to return the deal to parliament to ensure transparency and probity.
The statement read that,
“The President has accordingly, instructed the Minister that, in the interest of transparency and accountability to the Ghanaian people, the Agreements supporting the transaction that were submitted to Parliament, and approved by the House, should be resubmitted to Parliament for the approval process to start all over again.”
“This, he believes, will help address the concerns raised, principally, by the Minority, about having been given very limited time to subject properly the various Agreements to proper scrutiny. The transaction documents to be resubmitted are the Relationship Agreement, the Assignment Agreement, the Allocation Agreement, and the Investment Agreement.”
As a result of this directive by the President, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta is expected to send the controversial Agyapa Royalties agreement back to Parliament for further scrutiny.
Prior to this, the Alliance of CSO’s played a major role with regards to advocating for the deal to be terminated.
At the initial stages, they called on government to be more transparent with the proceeds and everything pertaining to the Agyapa Minerals Income Investment transaction saying that, if it had been orchestrated more openly and under a transparent regime, Ghanaians would not be raising numerous concerns and allegations like we are seeing now.
They further went on to say that, what the government was intending to do with the mineral royalties will not have been permissible under PRMA.
The association also called on the President, Nana Akuffo- Addo to suspend the implementation of the Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF) until all documents relating to the establishment of the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) and its beneficial owner(s) have been disclosed adding that as concerned Ghanaians, they sought to access the transaction documents on the MIIF’s website only to realize there was none.
They also urged the president to establish a multi stake holder process to review all options to optimize the mineral royalties in order to secure risk-free revenue to the state.
