Time for Ghana to own Ghana - Okyenhene

Okyenhene Amoatia Ofori Panin II says it’s about time Ghana owned itself, and stopped allowing foreigners to own and plunder the country’s natural resources for their countries.

“We should own our country. We should own our mines. We should own our gold. We should own our oil,” the Akyem Abuakwa paramount Chief and President of the Eastern regional house of Chiefs said on Tuesday when traditional leaders of the area met President John Mahama who is on a two-day visit there.

Amoatia Ofori Panin bemoaned that: “Here in this country there are six mobile companies operating in Ghana today, and there’s not one indigenous Ghanaian owned.”

“Every time I call the president and say: ‘hello’, somebody is making money and the money is not staying in Ghana,” he complained.

He said: “Twenty-four planes land in this country every day and take off and paid in foreign currencies, and we have no market share.”

“The point I’m making is we need to support young entrepreneurs in Ghana. Young people who are creative and innovative like any other young man in the world. We need to have credit access for them to establish start-up businesses.”

The Chief says he feels sad any time he remembers Ghana once was called the Gold Coast, and yet, the country cannot boast of one local mining magnate or millionaire in that industry.