What Lessons Should The Mills Administration Draw From The Actions Of The Kosmos Energies In Our Midst?

One gathers that the clever Dicks at Tallow Oil's partner, Kosmos Energy, now want to cut and run from Ghana – and claim that their major shareholders want out.

The government should simply block this outrage – the Kosmos Energies of this world must not be allowed to play games with the future of our country. Period. The government should draw a lesson from this - and simply nationalize our nation’s entire oil and gas industry.

They must put Tsatsu Tsikata in charge of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) again – and get it to go into joint-venture partnerships with the best-resourced of China's state-owned oil and natural gas companies.

The ultimate aim should be to make Ghana the oil refining capital of Africa, as well as the centre of gas liquefaction in Africa.

They should compensate the Kosmos Energies of this world with Ghana's sovereign bonds, not cash - and let them redeem them in future: and only after a longish period when enough oil and natural gas revenues have flowed into our national treasury.

Above all, they should expose this disgraceful attempt to destabilize our country by such ruthless cowboys – by bringing their actions to the attention of readers of newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times in the US, and the Financial Times, the Guardian and the Independent in the UK.

They can do so by alerting their investigative journalists who report on issues to do with corruption overseas (especially in the poorer parts of the developing world, such as Africa) by US and UK corporate entities and their partners from other Western nations.

They should also alert Global Witness – which has the contacts to get to the real reasons at the bottom of Kosmos Energy's actions.

This move by Kosmos Energy certainly has a lot to do with the government’s decision to take a second look at the contracts and agreements the crooks amongst our previous rulers sanctioned (and influenced to enable them benefit personally from those agreements).

If necessary, the government should get the relevant US Congressional committee to investigate the actions of Kosmos Energy in our country, as regards their decamping at precisely the point that the government here is taking a fresh look at the contracts and agreements the previous government made in the oil and natural gas industry.

In a sense, it smacks of insider dealing – with the saboteur-officials loyal to the crooks of old who are still in place in the administration eagerly passing on confidential information to the Tallow Oils operating here.

There are rumours that some of the oil companies struck secret deals with some of the crooks in our previous regime - who used special purpose offshore vehicles to hide their ownership of stakes in companies of that ilk and in other sectors of our economy.

That is exactly the same way they structured the fraudulent sale and purchase agreement for VALCO.

In that instance, they used a special purpose offshore vehicle they grandly named International Aluminum Partners, which the two reputable metals conglomerates, Norske Hydro and VALE, refused to be a part of. Both companies, which are clearly ethically-run, vehemently denied ever agreeing to purchase VALCO: although our dishonourable 4th Parliament had no difficulty allowing the crooks in the previous regime to railroad that most egregious of frauds through parliament and gladly sanctioned it

The government must keep an eye on our financial services sector too - where Ghana’s equivalents of the notorious US fraudster Bernie Maddox are comfortably ensconced. Some of them are even rumoured to have played “Kokofu-football-politricks” with depositors’ cash sitting in escrow accounts in non-banking financial institutions they own and manage.

The politically well-connected Titans amongst them are said to have made a killing in the era of crony-capitalism during the tenure of our erstwhile Hypocrite-In-Chief, our former president, Mr. Kufuor.

That blessed gentleman - described by the most uncharitable of his critics as “a sly and shameless man” - thought his party was going to be returned to power again after the December 8, 2008 elections and therefor got the Chinery-Hesse Committee (which was specifically jam-packed with sycophants whom he had given cushy sinecures to at our expense to make them amenable to his wishes) to recommend that he be given a cool one million dollars to set up a foundation.

And this, in a nation where many families can neither afford three square meals a day, nor pay for their children's school fees on a regular basis! The Mills administration must be super-ruthless in its approach to dealing with the unethical crowd of foreign carpetbaggers, who clearly do not believe in either ethics or show common decency, to derail their efforts at building a better Ghana for all the people of Ghana.

The government of the National Democratic Congress (NCD) should thank God that Kosmos Energy has shown its hand so early in their tenure. They must see the shabby attempt by Kosmos Energy to destabilize our country as an opportunity to enable us work with the Chinese to exploit our oil and natural gas deposits. We can rest assured that they will never attempt to interfere in our country’s politics under any circumstances, in the outrageous way that Kosmos Energy is attempting to do.