FOR A FAIRER GHANA LET'S HAVE FAIRER EXTRACTIVE-INDUSTRY AGREEMENTS!

Ghana has all the wealth in the world to enable it provide free education for all its citizens who have the aptitude to study (to whatever level they are capable of!), provide free healthcare for all its people and house ordinary people in well-designed and well-built affordable housing estates - except that over the years, its leaders have literally given that wealth away: in unfair agreement after unfair agreement with powerful multinational firms.

One would have therefore thought, that at a time when the old rules no longer apply, in a global political and economic climate in flux, our ruling elites would spend their energies thinking of ways to make the beneficiaries of those one-sided agreements see that in fairness, Ghanaians cannot continue to be impoverished, whiles they continue to literally cart our wealth away in the name of direct foreign investment, and that they must therefore be willing to renegotiate more transparent and win-win ones, to replace the rip-offs of the past.

Yet, sadly for Mother Ghana, instead of doing some lateral thinking, members of our political class choose instead to spend their energies making asinine comments and having pointless arguments. It is totally unacceptable - and must cease forthwith.

The Hon. Fritz Baffuor, who is the National Democratic Congress' (NDC) member of Parliament for the Ablekuma South constituency, gained my respect, when during a recent morning TV Africa current affairs programme, he expressed his frustration and exasperation by the painful and irritating fact that valuable time is being lost fuelling that pointless and negative type of politics: in a nation whose suffering people deserve so much better.

Is it not time that there was consensus amongst our ruling elites, for example, that what are some of the worst oil agreements in the world, must be renegotiated? We will have global public opinion on our side, will we not, if we are fair, firm and unyielding on that particular point - and tell the whole world why?

Will that not shame those Shylocks into seeing reason, dear reader: more so when as things stand they are getting away with polluting the waters off our shores and beaches along Ghana's coastline?

In terms of clean-up costs, and harm to society caused by the disruption to local coastal fishing economies, damaged wetland ecosystems and a polluted marine ecology, does only one spillage like the Gulf of Mexico BP disaster, not have the potential to wipe out wealth more or less equal, over generations, to the combined revenues from the entire production lifespan (and probably end up costing more than the combined value too!) of all Ghana's oil and natural gas deposits, I ask?

Why, then, have the geniuses who rule Ghana not put in place the most stringent environmental laws in the world to protect us, and ensure that oil companies responsible for any pollution, pay the clean-up costs, and compensate all those whose livelihoods they destroy with oil spillages - and are forced to return the natural environment to a pristine state too, on top of all that? Did they not see how the Obama administration dealt with BP when it caused that disaster in the Gulf of Mexico?

Ghanaians cannot continue to allow a finite resource to be exploited by foreigners for their sole benefit - whiles we pick up mere crumbs from their table-of-plenty. Rather we shut down production in all our oil fields, than allow that to carry on until the oil and natural gas deposits are depleted.

Tullow Oil has shown itself to be a fair and honest oil company. Let us get them to see that if allowed to continue, the situation could end up becoming an untenable one.

And who is to know, when that happens, if it will not lead to disenchantment amongst ordinary people, which some young military officer could seize upon, and do what Maummar Gaddafi did when he overthrew King Iddris: overthrow our incompetent Establishment and tear up those one-sided oil agreements, which only benefit foreign oil companies and their local collaborators?

Ordinary people are fed up with this musical-chairs-democracy, in which one set of greedy incompetents, who regard political power as the facilitator-in-chief of their personal wealth-creation agenda, follow each other in office, and then proceed to asset-strip the enterprise Ghana for their own benefit, once in power.

It is time ordinary people too enjoyed the material benefits of the democracy dividend, which, thus far, only Ghana's ruling elites have benefited from - as evidenced by the allowance upon allowance they receive, the perks and freebies galore they insist on, as well as those obscene retirement benefits to top all that profligacy at taxpayers' expense.

Let us start the journey to a fairer Ghana, with fairer oil agreements - and also tell AnglogoldAshanti that what Mr. Jonah wrung out of Kufuor & Co., cannot, in fairness, be allowed to stand too.

Unfair agreements signed with poor nations (with even poorer populations!), by powerful and wealthy multinational firms, are amoral and are the financial equivalent of the Nazi holocaust - and re-negotiating win-win ones to replace them, are the reparations they pay for their past sins. A word to the wise...

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