Political elites must manage oil expectations — Attafuah

THE Executive Director of the Justice and Human Rights Institute, Prof. Kenneth Agyeman Attafuah has called on the country’s political elites to prudently manage the revenue and the socio-political expectations of the oil find to avoid undermining the peace and social harmony of the country.
He said unless expectations were properly managed, social and political order could be severely disrupted.
Prof. Attafuah made the call when he presented a paper on “Managing the political and social expectations of Ghana’s oil”. It was organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).
He suggested that in order to effectively manage Ghana’s oil find expectations, the political elite must first recognise and accept the critical need to pull together the collective knowledge, wisdom and experience of all Ghanaians to fashion a sense of shared and sustainable prosperity propelled by oil.
He said, fortunately, both the NPP and NDC Governments have firmly assured Ghanaians that the nation was learning from international best practices, particularly, the positive experiences of Norway, Canada and other Euro-American countries which had effectively managed their oil finds into oil bonanzas.
“These hopes, expectations, fears and assurances are encapsulated in the Petroleum Revenue Management Bill 2010 – a draft law that provides a framework for “the efficient collection, allocation and management of petroleum revenue for the benefit of current and future generations of Ghanaians”, Prof. Attafuah.
He advised the political elite, including politicians, chiefs, opinion leaders and civil society groups, to temper public enthusiasm with realism and let the people know that the oil industry in developing countries was typically dominated by expatriates with specialised and technical skills, and that there was no reason to consider that the situation in Ghana would be any different.
“It is doubtful how many Ghanaian companies today are sufficiently positioned, financially and technically, to compete effectively against their multinational counterparts in the provision of the highly specialised oilfield, seismic, geophysical, drilling, packing (cementing wells) and logging services required in the oil sector,” he asked.
Prof. Attafuah called for an assessment on the current state of competence and levels of preparedness of Ghanaians vis-à-vis the external competition.
He said Ghanaians must bear in mind that the oil industry was characterised by the wholesale importation of specialised services and gave the example of oil exploration companies such as Schlumberger, Weatherford and Otis that did not engage locals for the provision of sundry technical services required in their operations.
He said such operations included catering, drilling, speed-boat and land security services and said with these services, the oil exploration companies relied on their “foreign friends”.
Prof. Attafuah said only a small number of jobs would be directly created to absorb the large army of expectant unemployed youths and pleaded with the authorities to communicate this potentially dismaying piece of reality to the expectant public.
He urged the ruling political elite to evince extraordinary leadership attributes in this enterprise, by displaying courage in toning down the wild, fuzzy, and unrealistic public expectations of the development manna, while at the same time transferring optimism and confidence in the future.
This, he said, required ingenious ways of expressing sincerity and conviction, in informing people not about “worst case scenarios” but about realistic profiles of an oil-propelled prosperity.
In this regard, he suggested that statutory national anti-corruption institutions such as the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), the Ghana Police Service and the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), must each undertake a comprehensive public education on the need for the populace to hold only realistic and legitimate expectations around the prospects embedded in the production of oil.
Prof. Attafuah said they must also undertake strenuous public education on integrity and anti-corruption.
He called for special legislation with severe legal sanctions against those who used state funds, particularly revenue from the oil and gas, to fund partisan and other selfish political activities.
“The goal must be to erase the risk of wasting public resources on partisan projects including vote-seeking behaviours. This, indeed, is a key best practice derived from the Norwegian experience in managing social and political expectations around their oil production and revenue utilisation,” Prof. Attafuah said.