Lawyer Isaac Minta Larbi has called on the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party administration to halt all royalty based agreements on Ghana’s new found lithium.
According to him, “everytime Ghana discovers some mineral or a resource which has the key to changing our destiny as a people we fail to take advantage of it in a manner that ensures that we reap the benefits of the mineral to the fullest unlike other countries who ensure that the agreements they sign would provide tremendous benefits.”
He made reference to the case of Bolivia, where the country recently insisted that unless and until lithium factories are set up in their country, and unless and until the extracted lithium is processed into finished goods such as batteries, etc they will never sign any agreement to extract lithium out of the country.
Lawyer Isaac Minta Larbi who holds an LLM (Master of Laws) with expertise in oil and gas, mining, project financing, investment consulting, further questioned the government on whether someone is holding a gun to their necks forcing them to sign agreements that would never help the country.
“Who is holding a gun to our necks forcing us to sign agreements that would never ever help this country?” he quizzed.
“I am asking the government of Ghana whether royalty based agreement is the only agreement it knows and why it always want to resort to this unhelpful agreement in the abundance of so many other options which are far better?”
Below is his full statement:
STOP ALL AGREEMENTS ON GHANA’S NEW FOUND LITHIUM MINERAL. WE NEED INDUSTRIALIZATION OF OUR MINERAL RESOURCES AND NO MORE ROYALTY BASED AGREEMENTS.
Ghana as a country cannot consistently deprive it’s citizens the proper development that it deserves.
The youth of the country cannot always be deprived of the needed employment opportunities.
Enough of the business as usual approach towards our national resources which has never helped this country apart from consistently making us poor.
If Dr Kwame Nkrumah was still our President we won’t be here but I bet you in the absence of Dr Kwame Nkrumah there are still Ghanaians out there when given the chance will do things better and not do what we have been doing.
Everytime Ghana discovers some mineral or a resource which has the key to changing our destiny as a people we fail to take advantage of it in a manner that ensures that we reap the benefits of the mineral to the fullest unlike other countries who ensure that the agreements they sign would provide tremendous benefits.
I don’t understand why everytime we think that only royalty based agreement is what we can sign.
Who is holding a gun to our necks forcing us to sign agreements that would never ever help this country?
I am asking the government of Ghana whether royalty based agreement is the only agreement it knows and why it always want to resort to this unhelpful agreement in the abundance of so many other options which are far better?
What we should be doing is at least even copy what other serious countries are doing such as Bolivia.
Recently Bolivia insisted that unless and until lithium factories are set up in their country, and unless and until the extracted lithium is processed into finished goods such as batteries, etc it will never sign any agreement to extract lithium out of the country.
The question is what about us?
Do you know the benefits to Bolivia of such a good decision regarding their lithium?
Not only do they get jobs for the extraction of the lithium when the companies are set up in their country, but the citizens also get more jobs when the processing companies are also set up for the processing of the lithium into finished goods.
The various factories along the chain of production would lead to thousands and thousands of jobs for the citizens.
Not only that, each factory along the chain of production would be paying taxes to the state from the government level to the local level in addition to income tax from all these employees.
If you are to put just a few numbers together to determine the number of different companies that would be set up along the chain of production from extraction to the various processing factories all the way to the finished goods it will not be less than over 500 different companies so you can imagine the numerous jobs and taxes that would be generated to the State.
Also, when the finished goods are exported the country gets export taxes and so many other benefits too.
So the question is, in the abundance of all these tremendous benefits why would the NPP government enter into a royalty based agreement with an Australian company just for them to extract our lithium and pay only peanuts to Ghanaians whilst we continue to suffer?
What will 13% do to us?
Very soon we’ll be here praising Bolivia for what it did with its lithium and we’ll be wishing we did same but it’ll be too late.
Do we always have to sell our resources cheap and then later go back to the IMF to go and beg?
What happened to the so called Ghana Beyond Aid?
This NPP government told the whole world that they have the men. Is this the men they are talking about?
The men who cannot do anything new and better? The men who prefer sinking Ghana and shortchanging Ghanaians with such an unhelpful and unprogressive agreement?
I urge Parliament of Ghana to stop this contract when it comes before it.
If not then I urge his Excellency Former President John Dramani Mahama to abrogate this contract soon as he assumes office in January 2025.
This is what we did with our gold and today there’s nothing we can show for all the abundant gold that has been exported out of Ghana.
Aside the gold Ghana then discovered oil which we thought would change our fortunes but due to similar royalty based agreements we are even worse off than we were without the oil.
Ghana was a far better country compared to today that we have discovered oil and have been exporting oil for almost 18 years now.
Unfortunately look at our plight today? Despite the production and export of oil, Ghana is now even a very terrible place under this NPP government.
Many of us thought that the oil would come to make Ghana better like it has done to so many countries such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, etc.
However, we haven’t benefitted because we always go for cheap and unhelpful contracts.
It appears for everytime we get the opportunity the only thing we think of is the easy way out which is to sign royalty agreements which is very myopic.
We think that we should only go for an agreement that would give us something in addition to what we have thinking it is better than nothing when in actual fact we should rather be taking the bull by the horn and taking progressive steps that would move us out of the extreme poverty we find ourselves.
Saudi Arabia was as poor as Ghana but today Ghana is not close to that country in anyway.
This is because instead of doing what Ghana has been doing which would have kept them poor like us, they rather pay oil companies to dig and produce the oil for them. Once they are done they pay them off. Saudi Arabia then owns 100% of the oil resource and once they sell the oil all the foreign exchange earned belongs to them. No percentage shares with anybody.
It is just like engaging a contractor to build residential properties for you. Once it is done you pay off the contractor and the properties remain yours and you can reap the full benefits from it without sharing the benefits with anyone when you rent them out.
Are we saying we don’t have competent people in Ghana who can lead us and do this for us?
What makes anyone think we cannot do same? What is stopping us? Is anyone holding a gun to our head and telling us to do what will always make us poor?
Ghana can also do what other serious countries are doing and can even do far better than those countries.
We can also pay contractors to mine our lithium, our gold and our oil so we own everything 100% afterwards.
Enough of the royalty based agreement. We don’t need it anymore.
Ghana deserves better. We have suffered for far too long under very incompetent and impotent leadership with impotent agreements that always keep us poor.
To raise money to do this we can set up a mutual fund and ask Ghanaians to buy into it.
Alternatively, we can impose a special levy to be used solely for the payment of investors to produce for us so we don’t share our resources with anyone.
For how long are we going to be allowing ourselves to be duped and short changed with these royalty based agreement which so far has proven so unhelpful?
At some point in our lifetime as a people we should be wise enough to change the way we do things and I ask that with the new found lithium we should not make the mistake of using another royalty contract as we have done with the gold and oil resources.
We should insist on sovereign control of our lithium, with the intention to develop it alone, or with limited input from foreign companies.
Our lithium should be industrialized and that should be the only way forward for our lithium.
If the NPP government cannot do anything different and can’t give us a better approach towards our national resources they should humbly leave our resources alone until we get a better government that is ready and willing to do things different for the benefit of Ghanaians.
If this government will not listen, then I call on the youth to rise to stop this government from selling our resources cheap.
We are tired of suffering and ready to take action to stop any myopic steps of the government that would perpetuate our poverty and underdevelopment.
We don’t want any 13% royalty based agreement for our lithium and it must be stopped. We demand the industrialization of our lithium and nothing else.
We need a radical approach towards our development. It cannot be business as usual anymore.
If you look at the agreement as published, the Australian company would be investing only an amount of US $145 million.
Is this the kind of money that cannot be generated in Ghana? Are we saying by the use of a special arrangement through a levy or the setting up of a special purpose vehicle through a mutual fund we cannot raise this money on our own?
We need to own our resources 100 % and it is non negotiable.
We should stop being lazy and show that we can do better than this.
The youth of this country are angry and hungry and as a member of the youth of this country and as a lawyer who fights for the rights of people it is my duty to speak against anything that would not help the youth of this country.
In my capacity as a youth and as a lawyer, I hereby speak for and on behalf of the youth of this country and say that the agreement should be abrogated and rejected by government or by Parliament so we can arrange a proper plan towards the extraction of our resources for our development.
We need money for our development and we can’t always be selling ourselves cheap only to turn round to go begging.
The shame and the embarrassment associated with this needless behavior is enough and it must come to an end.
The youth of this country are tired and do not want this kinds of agreements anymore and the leadership of this country needs to demonstrate the capacity to do greater things for Ghana.
If this is all they can do then they should step aside because at this stage we need radical approach towards our development and the proper, progressive and radical handling of our resources for our national development is absolutely critical.
Lawyer Isaac Minta Larbi
Private Legal Practitioner.
For and on behalf of the Youth of Ghana.
