Researcher, University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, Oliver Barker Vormawor says the 1.65 billion dollars GNPC-Aker deal is clearly the new Agyapa deal the country is dealing with.
Addressing some emerging issues from the deal on Joy FM, Oliver Barker Vormawor raised five questions that seek to highlight the concerns of some civil society groups.
According to him, GNPC failed to clearly put across the presumptions underlying the deal for the public to freely engage them.
"The first point is the presumptions underlying the deal which CSOs call faulty, incoherent or inconsistent. The problem is that if you have a deal that you are so convinced will bring where we fall in terms of revenue downstream for which reason we have to contract a loan."
"We couldn't even take existing resources but take a loan to do this you need to be able to stretch this put it out in the public domain. All the underlying assumptions for people to engage with and let's have a conversation about it. Looking at historical and how marketing projections will go over a period of time. That part has not been done."
He also questioned parliament for giving GNPC a blank cheque of 1.1 billion dollars to spend in the deal
"Questions of process and evaluation that is going on so I take something from the Parliamentary approval that says don't spend above 1.1 billion dollars. Now an institution...which does not have enough figures set a ceiling and what basis is he doing that. They have a committee that is not technically competent and not assisted by experts in any regard. Which as far as I'm concerned did not receive a memorandum in making the determination that they have done."Â
"The third one is capacity questions, we know that about a billion dollars have been given to it in the past in its attempt to be an independent operator. We have not seen anything materialized out of that. So capacity questions remain to your own track record and what you can do base on what you are promising," he said as he questioned the capacity of GNPC to carry out the deal successfully.Â
He further raised issues about the investor and also called for an investigation into the deal as he believes that venture is just being motivated by money for a few officeholders.Â
"Public sector workers in general there a significant amount of people who are technically competent. There are people who are sidely incompetent, what I know and understand is that a lot of actors in our space are not incompetent for no reason. They are... incompetent so we have to follow the money. I do not see an aggressive attempt to pay some other people 1.3 billion dollars without a local incentive in those processes. "
"I don't know whether it takes the form of Corruption Risk Analyses as was done for Agyapa but this is clearly the new Agyapa that we are dealing with."