When Tsatsu Talks Oil-Talk, Beware

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
May 1, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]

My gut reaction prompts me to ask Mr. Tsatsu "The Thief" Tsikata to steer as clear and as far away from Ghana's disputed oil-rich western boundary with La Cote D'Ivoire as possible and let us, Akans, deal with our Ivorian relatives and clansfolk and kinsfolk. At a time when even Mamprusi-born Dr. Mahammudu Bawumia, Vice-Presidential Candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), cannot rally his party's supporters and sympathizers to strategize for the 2016 general election in the Volta regional capital of Ho, I feel implacably offended to hear Mr. Tsikata pontificate sillily on whether Ghana is poised to winning its legal battle against President Alassane Dramane Ouattara and his people at the Germany-based International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS).

Knowing what I do know and have witnessed and experienced under the Rawlings-led Trokosi Revolution and the Trokosi Nationalist Congress, otherwise known as the National Democratic Congress (NDC), I would rather have my kinsfolk and their neighbors ceded the disputed oil-rich territory west of Cape-Three-Points (See "Tsatsu Tsikata Predicts Harder Times for Ivory Coast" MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/27/15). We know perfectly well that Mr. Tsikata's tenure as Chief-Executive-Officer of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), reserves him absolutely no moral authority, whatsoever, to speak on behalf of the collective interests of our beloved nation at large. That his own clansman and nepotistic kingmaker, then-President Jerry John Rawlings, would butt-kick Mr. Tsikata with his Ghana Armed Forces-issued jack-boots off the GNPC premises, for criminally causing financial loss to the state, ought to infuse Tsatsu's brain with some remarkable modicum of guilty conscience and common sense.

Well, just the other day, one angry reader of a column that I had written admonishing Mr. Kweku Baako to be circumspect with his pronouncements on the Ghana-Ivory Coast territorial impasse, wanted to know where I stood on the dispute. Maybe the most intelligent way to answer that angry "patriotic" Ghanaian critic is to pose the same question that Dr. Bawumia posed the other day to the key operatives of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress: "Where is the $3 billion realized as Ghana's share of royalty payments for the exploitation of our oil fields?" It goes without saying that a full-half of the answer squarely lies in the very scandalous decision of President John Dramani Mahama to seek an economic "bailout" loan of a minuscule $1 billion from the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF).

But to answer my critic even more forthrightly, I guess the right answer is that you can bet your proverbial bottom-dollar that regardless of what time of the day it is, you can rest assured that yours truly will always stand by the side of justice and fair play. Whatever the final outcome of ITLOS' verdict on the Cape-Three-Points impasse, one thing is painfully certain: As long as kleptocratic rascals like the GYEEDA and SADA and SUBAH operatives of the National Democratic Congress continue to run our affairs from the Flagstaff House, the country's oil finds and resources are unlikely to make any dent or significant difference in the quality of life of the average Ghanaian. Which is why, really, I couldn't care less which of the two disputants wins the ITLOS case. I am also glad that neither Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan nor Justice William Atugba will be delivering the verdict on Cape-Three-Points come September 2017 or thereabouts.

And so Mr. Tsikata's rather whimsical speculation that the partial victory delivered by the ITLOS jurists presages a massive judicial victory for Ghana, I prefer the Rawlings posse, two years from now, is decidedly superfluous.

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