Northern MPs are sycophants – ACEP boss

The Executive Director for Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam has accused Members of Parliament from Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions of singing praises of their political parties to the neglect of development for their constituents.

According to him, for the past three years, only 9% of the oil revenue had been allocated to all the three regions combined, with the Central Region, while the remaining 91% went to the other six regions.

Speaking to civil society groups at Zuarungu near Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region, during an open forum on how petroleum revenues were being spent, Dr. Amin observed that northern politicians are not doing much because partisanship had clouded their sense of judgement.

“They should first of all see themselves as representing the northern people and their interests before they consider party interest”, he emphasized.

“I can’t understand. Putting the three regions together, only 9% of the oil money was received and yet we have MPs from the north who sit in Parliament and approve the minister’s budget. If the caucus of MPs from the north boycotts the minister’s budget because we are supposed to be declared the poorest regions and we should be receiving more of the oil money if it is meant to reduce poverty as indicated under the objectives for spending the oil money, what do you think the minister will do?

The minister will not have proper endorsement and emphatic endorsement of his budget. So I expect our northern MPs to be more progressive and action oriented and to ensure that they truly represent the masses who have voted them to parliament rather than being there singing their parties’ interests. That is not good for the northern people and posterity will judge them one day if they continue to behave the way they do”.

Dr. Amin noted Ghana is an agrarian economy because most Ghanaians are into agriculture, with majority of them being the rural poor communities.

To him, if the government was serious about poverty reduction, then more of its resources would have to be invested into agriculture because agriculture had the highest social and economic returns.

According to him, if government failed to see agriculture from a strategic point of view and not just business as usual, development would not be accelerated. This, he noted, would not make our lower middle income status meaningful.

He explained that the lower middle income status was only expressed in figures as people in the rural poor communities continued to wallow in poverty. “So let’s make agriculture our focal point of our development by investing more to mechanize agriculture and to modernize agriculture so that we can improve on the income levels of people and get them out of poverty.

“Now, we see oil revenue as providing relief as additional to tax revenue and the grants that we receive from donors and we think that because oil revenues are exhaustible, it is better we use the revenues in sectors that can continue to sustain our economy beyond the depletion of our oil and agriculture offers that opportunity for us”.

He emphasized that if that was done, the country would be self-sufficient, produce raw materials to feed the industry and even export food beyond the time the oil would not be there so that the economy could be sustained.

Dr. Amin warned government not continue to deceive Ghanaians by allocating more money to the agriculture only to disburse less to the sector as this could dampen the spirit of farmers.

For example, he said if government failed to carry out projects advertised in the budget, productivity would suffer especially small holder farmers who needed basic facilities such as tractors and fertilizers to improve on their productivity for domestic consumption and for export.

According to him, government was doing well with the transparency of the country’s oil revenue but that was not enough, because transparency was not an end in itself but rather, must be a means to an end.

He stressed that agriculture was key for national development and called on government to commit itself to the Maputo Declaration that stated that 10% or more of national resources was put into agriculture.

It must also commit itself to allocating more of the oil money to support small scale farmers while ensuring that agriculture remained the main top priority on the national development agenda.

Dr. Amin pledged to ensure that the government made legal commitment to invest in agriculture and also to put in place long term development plan that would put agriculture ahead of everything. “This is why we need physical responsibility legislation that compels government to identify key priority areas where government should honor its budget” he stressed.

The aim of the forum was to report on a campaign last year which saw participants in the Upper East Region selecting agriculture and education sectors as key areas they would want their share of the oil revenues to be invested in.

However, Dr. Amin could report on agriculture and not education because ACEP with support from Oxfarm America and Oxfarm GB could not finalize its report on education.

A social advocate and the administrator for Northern Patriots in Research Advocacy (NORPRA), Mr. Bismark Ayorogo Adongo, was optimistic the three regions had a lot to benefit from the campaign as it would go a long way to demand appropriate allocation and disbursement of the oil revenues from government.

He admitted NORPRA had capacity gaps on some critical sectors and hinted they had proposed to ACEP to build its capacity in oil and gas sector on how to make very good analysis of oil revenue and expenditure to enable them do tracking.

Funding for their programmes, he said, was also another capacity gap but assured they would use their limited resources to execute their mandate as pressure group.