By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 22, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

We must all line up behind the decision by the three New Patriotic Party (NPP) Members of Parliament to sue the head of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) - or is it Ghana National Petroleum Authority (GNPA)? - for contracting a nearly one-billion-dollar loan facility with a German financial institution without the express permission and approval of the people's representatives (See "Three MPs to Sue GNPC over $700 Million Loan" Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 11/23/14).

This scandalous exercise of extra-legal impunity primarily stems from the fact that for more than 10 years, the Rawlings-chaperoned so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) dominated the Ghanaian political landscape with impunity. And Mr. Alexander Mould, the Chief Executive Officer of the GNPC, and many of his associates and key players of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), the expedient neo-manifestation of the erstwhile PNDC, have a cavalier attitude towards the democratic rule of law, precisely because they politically came of age at a time when the country operated as a virtual half-junta one-party dictatorship.

And this incontrovertibly explains why 22 years into Ghana's Fourth-Repblican Constitutional Democracy, Mr. Mould and his ilk, including President John Dramani Mahama, of course, appear to be finding it so difficult to obey the laws of the land. Yes, it is true that the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation was established under the watch of the Rawlings-led PNDC junta (1981-1992), but the political culture and landscape have dramatically shifted in favor of constitutional governance. This means that whereas in the past all that Mr. Mould needed to have done, in order to contract a loan from a foreign lender/creditor, was to have simply informed the PNDC Secretary for Finance and Economic Planning, in 2014, that authority of oversight is the especial and exclusive preserve of Parliament.

It well appears that Mr. Mould and most of the Mahama cabinet appointees have indescribable disdain and aversion for the constitutional authority of our august National Assembly. If the foregoing observation has validity, and so far this is where all indicators point to, then one has good reason to wonder what Ghanaians like Messrs. Mould and Mahama Ayariga are doing in government.

In the wake of Mr. Mould's flagrant violation of Ghana's 1992 Republican Constitution, by unilaterally contracting a loan facility behind the backs of our parliamentarians, Mr. Ayariga, himself an NDC member of our august House of Parliament for Bawku-Central in the Upper-East Region, had the effrontery to back Mr. Mould's violation of the Constitution and the democratic rule of law.

And the irony of it all is that Mr. Ayariga is a Harvard-trained lawyer. Maybe it is this very fact that makes the Mahama senior staffer think and believe that he can flout our nation's laws with impunity. Now, he will have to justify his legal impertinence and perfidy before a legitimately constituted court of law. The three New Patriotic Party MPs suing Mr. Mould and the GNPC are Messrs. Samuel Atta-Akyea, Deputy Chair of the Public Accounts Committee in Parliament; Dr. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, the NPP-MP for Manhyia; and Dr. Anthony Akoto-Osei, Ranking Member of the Parliamentary Finance Committee.

The plaintiffs cogently argue that as a statutory establishment, the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation falls under the legal authority and oversight of Parliament. But Mr. Ayariga claims that the old regime, or PNDC-spawned contractual protocol, still holds and actually takes precedence over the 1992 Constitution. He also argues, quite sophistically and outrageously, that sequestering GNPC borrowings from the larger borrowings of the central government actually makes the government look good, since the GNPC contractual loan obligations can then be feigned to exist outside of the general financial liabilities of the Ghanaian taxpayer.

How the preceding cognitive tack can make sense to an Ivy-League-schooled man like the Mahama cabinet appointee, may have to be explained to a judge in a court of law. What is clear from the "executive-side" argument of Mr. Ayariga is the lurid fact that somebody is poised to royally scamming the present generation of Ghanaian citizens and posterity, by unconscionably mortgaging the country's fledgling oil industry for the proverbial mess of pottage.

We also hope that whatever verdict gets handed down by the court will redound to the long-term and far-reaching benefit of Ghanaians, both living and yet-to-be-born.