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Opinions of Saturday, 5 June 2010

Columnist: Lamptey, Joel O.

Ghana’s Oil Belongs To No Party

Ghanaians have a reason to proclaim war against any government in power who misuse our funds or does not develop the country during their years in power to favour the people of Ghana.

?I have been following closely on the discovery of Ghana’s new mineral (Oil) as announced by Tullow Oil of 600 million barrels of light Oil offshore from Ghana which I must say that God has blessed this nation and our greatest achievement is to be productive for our beloved country.

The Ex-president of Ghana John Kufour indicated that the discovery of this Oil will give a major boost to Ghana’s economy and went on to say that “Oil is money and we need money to do the schools, the roads and hospitals. If you find Oil, you manage it well”.

The Ex-president’s his speech during the era of Oil discovery shows his ambition to have Mother Ghana prosper with no indication of political party’s control over this discovery but rather Ghana as a whole and to benefit the people of Ghana. For this reason the ex-president stipulated, “With Oil as a shot in the arm, we’re going to fly”.

Every political party being in power wants to either proclaim or use this Oil to their advantage especially to secure good political platform for the next election in 2013.?Political leaders should understand that the Oil is not their opportunity to power neither do they have the uttermost right to misuse such resources despite our failure to have conformed and wisely use the Gold we have, to boost the economy during previous times.

How possible: Pervious parties in power has wasted our natural resources and the people of Ghana are suffering considerably especially the youth with no jobs after so many years in school and the Mill administration has recently been proven to show no job till 2013 as investor are been turn away. Although Ghana’s economy relies mainly on gold, timber and cocoa which are already doing well without easy money that the Oil will provide including more employment in the public sector.

If we have one more chance to make things right and not live on our past mistakes but rather have a better future. NPP claims to have found the Oil therefore has the rights to facts and negotiations whiles NDC claims to have inherited the Oil disrupting with any negotiations that had been concluded. Everybody wants to seize the opportunity to obtain money in their pockets (selfish counterparts).

Now What: After 50 years of independence, Ghana finally discovers Oil and would prefer such discovery to be stable and helpful in boosting the economy rather than having division among ourselves and the people living in nothing. Considering Nigeria with over 115 million citizen and has Oil in abundance yet the local people have nothing.

Nigeria is one of the world’s major Oil products but output has been cut by years of unrest in the Niger Delta – the source of its Oil. Mend (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) believes that the Nigerian government would not control of resources to local people. There has been much violence in the region. This looks more of destruction within the Nigerian community of their great money supply.

?Ghana should rather strengthen their securities around the Oil and develop strategies of maintaining and using the Oil for proper use for the people of Ghana.

Hope the Mills administration will not allow the Oil discovery to deteriorate the Ghana’s relationship with other countries as our development will also depend on our neighbouring countries and it appears the Mill administration are giving rapid the growth to the tension between Ghana and Nigeria.?

President Atta Mills’s government since in power had repeatedly interfered with KOMOSI business and they have targeted foreign companies that invested greatly in Ghana under their previous administration.

The parties are behaving like our resources was cursed before having this Oil as most countries having a lot of resources had led to bad government and left most people worse off. ?

?Written and Edited by: ?Joel O. Lamptey.? LL.B. Hons (Westminster), PgDip (College of Law). ?This post is based on the thoughts, observations and opinions of Joel O Lamptey. Therefore all comments, corrections and contributions should be sent to joelodartey@yahoo.com.?This publication is protected by International Copyright Law. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any way or by any means, including photocopying, mechanical, electronic or recording, without the written permission of the copyright holder, application for which should be addressed to the publisher