Energy expert at the Institute of Energy Security, Adam Yakubu, has alluded that the Gold for Oil policy earlier launched by the Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is not a feasible solution to resolving the current economic crisis.
According to him, the policy comes across as suspicious and the lack of transparency from the government makes the concept more problematic to apprehend.
In an interview on the Happy Morning Show with Samuel Eshun, the energy expert reiterated that despite several attempts from civil society groups to demand the transparency of the agreements and engage in consultations, the government has shown no interest.
“Government did indicate to us that it meant well but we still insisted that to this there should be proper consultation. The right stakeholders are involved before the whole agreement comes into being. We were ignored and gov’t went ahead to announce they would do the first implementation of the policy and now that the 40,000 was received, we insisted on the amount government paid to receive the petroleum product and how much gold was used.”
“For us, we have continuously and consistently demanded the actual policy agreement so we can make inputs and the contract agreement that supplied the Petroleum product under the first consignment received.
We haven’t received any official report and just yesterday we picked information that the first consignment that was received was actually not under the program or money paid for and not as explained earlier in the policy’s intent of gold for oil,” he bemoaned.
He further mentioned that the policy could be doom to the country’s economy if further the government persists with the agreement without proper consultation.
“The interesting thing about the whole thing is the issue of transparency where our concern really lies because at the end of the day if we’re not transparent enough we’re likely to go into an agreement that will be to our disadvantage. It is not just about IES, other civil societies have called on the government to make available the policy document.
The fear we all have is we don’t want to get to a stage where we cannot go back. The industry is a relatively transparent industry and as experts in the industry, we think we should be allowed to contribute meaningfully but if we’re ignored and something happens in the future government would have itself to blame.”
