The Co-Chair of the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI), Dr Steve Manteaw, has called for critical interventions to halt abuse of revenues, particularly those accruing from the mining sector.
“Even if we (PIAC) do not have the prosecutorial powers, we can resort to existing institutions of state that have it, so, the GHEITI does not just disclose but where you suspect abuse, you have to refer those cases to such institutions to investigate and prosecute.”
“That is how we can make that critical transition from transparency to accountability,” he stated during a media engagement to discuss the 2016 Mining and Oil/Gas reports and the Ghana Commodity Trading and Pilot report at Aburi in the Eastern Region.
Dr Manteaw noted that citizens should be able to demand accountability and that was why Ghana had signed on to the EITI to produce periodic reports to enhance transparency around the generation and spending of revenues from the extractive sector, among others.
Dr Manteaw said it was required of the citizens to ensure that resources were managed efficiently for posterity.
“Ghana is endowed with so many resources yet remain so poor. If citizens have information on how the natural resources are being managed through the EITI, it will encourage them to also participate to change the narratives,” he said.
Transparency without accountability
Dr Manteaw noted that in the oil and gas sector, for instance, there was a lot of transparency but yet reports on abuse of revenues were very rife.
“We have so much transparency in the oil sector.
The Ministry of Finance is publishing, Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) is disclosing, PIAC is disclosing, EITI is disclosing yet we are reporting daily abuses.
“Money is allocated for projects and you go and the projects are non-existent and you don’t know where the money has gone to yet we have transparency,” he said.
He, thus, called for a re-examination of the theory underpinning the country’s transparency initiatives as it had over the years failed to promote accountability.
“I am raising the question that we need to re-examine this theory of change. Transparency does not necessarily lead to accountability, something else must happen,” he noted.
