By Nana Kofi, GLU-Ghana Leadership Forum
Recently, I witnessed in dismay a tirade by a white man in the first class cabin of a mid-size airplane, admonishing another first class passenger, a Ghanaian male, for “begging” for his seat. What is wrong with you Africans? All you do is beg, beg, beg for everything!! You can beg all you want; I am not going to give you my seat. Tempers finally cooled down, and the aircraft took off. Unfortunately, I was sitting next to this white man who, a few minutes ago, had insulted my whole race. With nothing else to do, I turned and asked him “what was all that about”? Apparently, the Ghanaian man was travelling with his “wife”; they had been seated in 1st class on separate rows, and apart. The man had asked this white man to exchange his seat, so the couple could be close. The white man had refused, but the Ghanaian man had persisted with numerous “I beg you”; which eventually took the white man to his boiling point. “So what would it have cost you to exchange your seat?” I asked. His response, the essence of this article was this.
“I booked my flight the last minute, and got the last 1st class seat available, this one. This means it was also available to this man, if only he had asked to be seated close to his wife. He did not, but now comes “begging” for what WAS DUE HIM in the first place.” “That still shouldn’t get your collar up”, I said. “You may be right; unfortunately, I have just finished a month long negotiations with your Ministers and Government officials over your god given mineral rights, and what my gold mining company should pay.
I come to your country, see all this poverty everywhere, with wealth right under your feet. Your own government gives only foreign companies the rights and privileges to rape and steal your country blind. For a few thousand dollars, your government officials allow these foreign companies to walk away with: (a) Perpetual tax holidays, (b) Duty free imports, (c) Bloated capital and operational investment costs,
(d) under-declared mineral output, (e) minimum wages for local employees doing all the work, but FAT salaries and expense accounts for foreigners who do almost nothing; (f) exaggerated cost of shoddy school blocks and boreholes instead of meaningful royalty to local land owners and communities; (g) destruction of local farm lands with pitiful resettlement payments; (h) pollution of local drinking water; (i) destruction of local infrastructure, etc.
My bosses had counseled me at a briefing before my departure. I was asked to read your Osageyefo’s “Neo-Colonialism”. Then I was told: “be prepared, and the first, to offer the negotiating team, (a) a few thousand dollars each; (b) a center, or a 6-room school block, or a few bore holes for the community; and there will be no mention of the usual above 10% royalties, or an actual government oversight of our operations, or adequate resettlement compensations, etc.”
I did not believe my bosses since I, a mere high school graduate, was coming to deal with officials with Masters and Doctorate degrees. Imagine my shock and disappointment when these officials, instead of demanding what is INTERNATIONALLY ACCEPTABLE COMPENSATIONS AND ROYALTIES for their country and communities, only accepted the 3% royalties, and with ALL KINDS OF GIVEAWAYS, and then came to me later BEGGING me to deposit “something” in their foreign accounts (numbers written on pieces of paper). I do not want to hear the phrase “I beg you” again.
The irony here is that these so called Educated people, after negotiating away the countries wealth, and depositing their “something”s into foreign banks, turn round to go and BORROW their own money from the IMF, World Bank, or “Donor” countries/ “Development Partners”. Do you remember the number of PhD beneficiaries, and the destinations of the Mabey & Johnson kickbacks? It amazes me that your intelligentsia, Ministers and Presidents, who have studied, or have travelled oversea, still don’t get the idea that “THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH”. THERE ARE NO “DONOR COUNTRIES” OR “DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS”. THE FOREIGN MINING COMPANIES TAKE YOUR MINERALS FOR NEXT TO NOTHING, DEPOSIT THEIR HAUL INTO THEIR BANKS, AND THEN TURN ROUND TO LOAN THE SAME TO OUR GOVERNMENTS, AGAIN WITH REDICULOUS CONDITIONS.SUCH AS “NO SUBSIDIZED” BASIC EDUCATION.
Surely, companies like Anglogold and Newmont are contributing to our economy, I offered. “At what price? Have you been to Obuasi recently to see the devastation and destruction of once a beautiful city? Newmont has over 740 sq. km concession in Ahafo; what did the Ahafo’s get in return for Newmont’s ANNUAL revenues of over $750,000,000? Almost NOTHING!!
This is exactly what your first President was talking about in “Neo-Colonialism“. Have you read that book? He asked me. I was ashamed to answer “No”. “I don’t blame you; none of your “Educated” officials at the negotiating table had read it. That book ought to be a must-read textbook in your schools and colleges, so that you can understand how foreign companies and governments strive to rob you blind, just as before. Only this time, their methods are cloaked in one-sided “agreements” with the connivance of your “Educated” Managing Directors, Ministers, and Presidents. “How can you accuse our officials of complicity?” I asked defensively. Has your media asked why the MD’s of the Ghana Chamber of mines keep defending the mining companies, or how a Ghanaian, working for a Ghanaian/British joint company in Ghana earned the “Order of the British Empire (Sir)”? Can you imagine these foreign companies, under the watchful eyes of your govt. officials, paying the indigene 5 pesewa (GhC 0.05) ground rent for their acre of concessional land after they have hauled away GhC 1,000,000 from the same acre?
THE BIG COMPANIES, NEWMONT AND ANGLOGOLD ARE NOT EVEN ASHAMED TO CONNIVE WITH YOUR GOVT OFFICIALS TO SIDESTEP PAYING THE INCREASED 5% ROYALTY. THEY ARE PAYING THE 5% BASED ON ANCIENT GOLD PRICE OF $300.00/OZ INSTEAD OF THE CURRENT WORLDWIDE PRICE OF $1500.00/OZ., SHORTCHANGING YOUR PEOPLE $75,000,000 in the process. Unfortunately, your negotiating officials are happy to giggle to the foreign banks with their thousands, accompanied in some cases by “Dr”s and “Sir”s.
Even the Chinese are getting in on the act, albeit ILLEGALLY. They are threatening communities with guns and firepower, AND YOUR MILITARY LOOKS ON UNCONCERNED. Your media is just as bad. With buffet lunches or dinners and a few Cedis in their pockets, your print media become the propaganda machines of these mining companies. They tout the few boreholes and the 6-room schools, but leave out the callous treatment of local employees and residents, and the destruction of the environment. The airwaves are SILENT on all this. WACAM IS THE LONE VOICE FOR THE PEOPLE. Why don’t your media SUPPORT WACAM by broadcasting and educating the masses, especially the officials that (a) THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT APPROVE OF FOREIGN COMPANIES ROBBING THE INDEGENES FULL BENEFITS OF THEIR GOD GIVEN MINERAL AND OIL DEPOSITS. (b) Before Rawlings, foreign mining companies in Ghana could not hold more than 40% interest in their partnership with the government; now the Ghana govt. holds ZERO percent, while they hold 100%,; and therefore do not account to any authority.
A 50% annual return on investment (ROI) for the first 7 years, is generally considered EXCELLENT. Foreign mining/ oil companies in Ghana and the rest of Africa, are PERPETUALLY hauling away over 400% return on their investments, without any regard to the plight of the indigenes.
I feigned sleep, so he stopped talking. I was actually reflecting on all that he had said. I realized that YES, we had become too “give me, give me”; “I beg”, “I beg you”; “My Christmas box”; “Give us something for water”.
I am reminded by this my brother’s analogy. His cat will “meow” for some food, usually crumbs, in his bowl outside. The bowl of food will attract the resident mice. One would think the cat would opt for the juicy mice, NOO. He would lay there and watch the mouse eat all his food, and then come back “Meowing” for more crumbs.
WE WATCH OUR OFFICIALS GIVE AWAY OUR GOLD, OIL, BAUXITE, DIAMOND, ETC FOR THEIR MEAGRE KICKBACKS, WHILE WE WALLOW IN POVERTY. IT IS TIME WE WAKE UP FROM OUR SLUMBER, AND TAKE WHAT IS RIGHTFULLY OURS AT THE NEGOTIATING TABLE. AT THAT TIME, WE CAN TELL OBAMA AND CAMERON TO TAKE BACK THEIR GAYS AND AID
June 26, 2012 at 2:00 pm
It’s a shame that we look unconcerned for this to happen to us as Africans.
It looks as if our leaders have lost their sense of nationalism and only think about their selfish interests. We must open our eyes widely on the activities of the people in capacity to deal on behalf of the citizenry, else we remain in a begging state forever.
June 26, 2012 at 8:24 pm
Thanks, David. I think we Africans must never forget we need to be on top of issues concerning those who rule us.
Regards,
TOLA.
June 24, 2012 at 11:04 am
We are all aware of this situation…but what are we going to do about it? Does anyone for a minute believe that Africans are just waking up to the realization that they are being abused and cheated out of their own resources? Or that these companies will just suddenly hand over the true amounts due us without a fight? I just hope that eventually we will not just talk ourselves to death while changing nothing because that is where i see us going. Ghana has become a talk-show armchair philosophizing country where committees discuss everything but do nothing.
May GOD help us all!!
June 24, 2012 at 12:32 pm
Dear Joe,
Thanks very much for your input.
As it is with Ghana, so it is with Nigeria and, perhaps, most African countries. Plane crashes? Set up investigating committees, etcetera but nothing comes of the reports of these committees and the same mistakes therefore get repeated.
A place to start, though, is a comment like yours that tells African rulers ‘enough enough’ of the looting that has reduced our citizens to belittled travelles, participants at international conferences, etcetera – to beggars.
We must never stop heckling them so that Africans can one day hold up their heads and demand their rights instead of begging for them.
Regards,
TOLA.
March 16, 2012 at 10:12 am
I say thank you to every contributor. This is, indeed sad and it is not just about our leaders. It has to do with every one of us. We are land owners and the hour has come for us to begin to behave as one. We had, at some point in our lives, sold our birthrights for a pot of pottage. This is a wake-up call.
March 17, 2012 at 4:28 am
Thank you very much Ms. Obe. It is indeed sad and I agree that while we cannot but blame our leaders, the power does lie in us all to effect change.
Regards,
TOLA.
March 14, 2012 at 10:48 am
41.71.173.232
Submitted on 2012/03/14 at 10:48 am
Anyone who thinks the trouble is with “our leaders” still misses the point. It is an African plague. Small thinking. Narrow-mindedness. Inferiority Complex. Poverty Mentality.
Africans are notorious for seeking individual or narrow benefit, instead of THE COLLECTIVE GOOD. This goes on at virtually every level of our society. The leaders of today were the followers of yesterday. For further reading, see Walter Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.” I think a sequel is long overdue – “How Africans Underdevelop Africa.”
By the way, what the angry passenger and the narrator of this wonderful story forgot to mention was that for his temerity to document the evils of NEO-COLONIALISM, Kwame Nkrumah got blackmailed, lost power and died – with the active connivance of the West… Africans are willing victims of their own oppressors
March 14, 2012 at 7:04 pm
Thanks, Victor. What a very precise and interesting take of our sad situation. The same narrow-mindedness made one of the Anglican Bishops of old narrate a story – a metaphor, really – of the African condition. I’ll try to make it brief:
A black man and white man were in a race. They both arrived at an obstacle, a high wall at the same time, thought of constructing a ladder to scale the wall AT THE SAME TIME and got to the top of the wall AT THE SAME TIME. While the white man left his ladder for the next white man who may need it, our black cousin took his and threw it over to the other side of the wall. End of story.
THE COLLECTIVE GOOD? Forget it when it comes to the black man.Slfishness will forever keep us down. It’s the mother of corruption and every vice that holds us back.
Regards,
TOLA.
March 13, 2012 at 12:56 pm
This piece is really food for thought for everybody in Africa, especially our leaders. It is really in accordance with the Yoruba saying that ”Owo Abu laa fi se Abu l’alejo” ( you use what you get from Abu to feed him). The oyinbo man is dead right and correct. Here in the UK, I have come to realise that a white man does not beg you for any obligation even if it’s something greatly beneficial to him. The notion is, you do it because it is convenient for you to do it. But they understand us well in Africa because of our leaders’ greed and passion for money and materials. They (African Leaders), will even beg them to pay the 10% bargain which an oyinbo will not 419 them out.
Nobody can convince me that the so-called African economists like the Okonjos working with the World Bank and the IMF are not aware of this. You see our folly. They are there helping to rip Africa off and subjecting her to economic bondage. Though I have not heard of that book before, I would love to read it to educate myself. I will surely look for it. If possible it should be entrenched in our curriculum under social studies in our secondary schools. But will Nigeria – and Afrca’s – today’s leaders do it? However, there is solace that one day Africa shall be liberated whether by crook or by hook.
March 13, 2012 at 3:57 pm
Thanks, Fatai. It’s really much food for thought and from that oyinbo’s tirade comes a lot of home truth. The Iwealas of the economic world apparently look out for nobody but their own interests.
Regards,
TOLA
March 13, 2012 at 8:42 am
I feel depressed. The situation in Nigeria is probably the worst. Government policies/contracts are always skewed in favour of partners/contractors at the expense of the people because government officials have been ‘settled’. That is why Shell and other oil giants always get away with the devastation of the Niger-Delta; gas flaring, oil spills, etc. The policy of concession of government utilities and companies has never been favourable to government, yet they were signed on behalf of government by some officials. Check out these ones; Lagos Airport Local Terminal, Lagos Ibadan Expressway, Ajaokuta Steel Industry, Lekki Epe expressway. I wonder if the physiology of the African man is different from people in other continents..There must be a re-awakening to make our people derive maximum benefits from our God-given resources. There is no reason why the Niger-Delta area cannot be like Dubai or Miami; it’s all about visionary, selfless leadership. But when a government of an oil-producing nation in its wisdom decides to import petroleum products at exorbitant cost rather build new refineries, you can wager what’s the bottom line: corruption.
March 13, 2012 at 4:27 pm
Thanks, Mr. Adedayo. I cannot blame you for wondering about the make-up of the black man. Our physiology, intellectual CAPABILITY, indeed, everything but ATTITUDE as a recent post, http://emotanafricana.com/2012/03/11/what-must-be-done-to-take-nigeria-nay-most-of-africa-from-their-present-stagnation-2/ shows. There is nothing wrong with us that good and selfless leaders who are determined to re-orientate us cannot achieve.
As for the Delta, it is a travesty that a place so rich in resources that have produced most of the wealth that has turned this country into a corruption cesspool – could be so deprived. What the leadership vacuum in Nigeria has caused is immeasurable and has turned us into the beggars that we all are to varying degrees, including the looters whose treatment in high-end shops overseas do no justice to the loads of money they offload to show what they believe is their worth. These merchants know the sources of the wealth that enable these parvenus walk into a store and purchase a dozen Rolex watches at a go!
Regards,
TOLA.
March 13, 2012 at 4:27 pm
Thanks, Mr. Adedayo. I cannot blame you for wondering about the make-up of the black man. Our physiology, intellectual CAPABILITY, indeed, everything but ATTITUDE as a recent post, http://emotanafricana.com/2012/03/11/what-must-be-done-to-take-nigeria-nay-most-of-africa-from-their-present-stagnation-2/ shows. There is nothing wrong with us that good and selfless leaders who are determined to re-orientate us cannot achieve.
As for the Delta, it is a travesty that a place so rich in resources that have produced most of the wealth that has turned this country into a corruption cesspool – could be so deprived. What the leadership vacuum in Nigeria has caused is immeasurable and has turned us into the beggars that we all are to varying degrees, including the looters whose treatment in high-end shops overseas do no justice to the loads of money they offload to show what they believe is their worth. These merchants know the sources of the wealth that enable these parvenus walk into a store and purchase a dozen Rolex watches at a go!
Regards,
TOLA.
March 13, 2012 at 7:40 am
This is very deep. and with your permission, I would like to post your article on my blog : olaoluwabimibola.wordpress.com. This is very deep
March 13, 2012 at 4:43 pm
Welcome and thanks, Mr. Abimbola. Of course you may post it as I too got it from elsewhere. Just use my URL FOR MY benefit and the Ghana source will show. I will be checking your blog out.
Sincere regards,
TOLA.
March 13, 2012 at 7:18 am
I am reading this, soon after reading Thomas Friedman in the following.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/friedman-pass-the-books-hold-the-oil.html
It is like a plane in fierce turbulence.
March 13, 2012 at 6:36 pm
Thanks, TO. I know I can always count on you to fill me in on things I MUST not miss.
I’ve read the post and it must go as a necessary addition to the FOOD FOR THOUGHT piece.
Regards,
TOLA.