The issues surrounding the Gold-for-Oil Program seem not to be dying anytime soon, as a new international forensic audit of the program has confirmed what some critics have been saying all along, that the initiative was not the groundbreaking idea it was made out to be.
Bright Simons, Honorary Vice President of IMANI Africa, minced no words when reacting to the findings. According to him, the scheme was “nothing innovative,” but rather a clever distraction wrapped in fanfare.
The forensic review revealed that billions in potential state revenue were lost through missing documents, opaque contracts, and questionable supplier selections. These loopholes, the audit review caused the country to lose about GHC7.2 billion in state revenues.
Bright Simons, who has consistently critiqued the program in his comments after the international forensic review, indicated that G4O was just like an old magician’s trick. It was flashy on stage, empty behind the curtain.
The honorary vice president of IMANI further insisted that the pomp and pageantry that even surrounded the launch of the initiative were not necessary.
“We have used the term “state enchantment” to characterise the deep truth about programs like G4O. The grand pageantry around a very simple idea of using forex earned from exporting gold to import refined fuel, which can be understood by an SHS 1 econs student, was done purely to hide shady underhand dealings,” he indicated.
Bright Simons maintained that the over-elaboration of the programme was just an alleged ploy to benefit people connected to the initiative while robbing the state.
He said, “That way millions of dollars could flow into private pockets whilst politicians reaped massive PR benefits. Distracted citizens could, thus, not ‘follow the money’. There was nothing innovative about G4O, except these schemes of distraction.”
This revelation mimics the countless “game-changing” government schemes rolled out with pomp, only for them to quietly drain public funds instead of fixing the problems they promised to solve.
Instead of being a policy that would shield Ghana from dollar shortages and high fuel costs, the programme has now been exposed as a costly illusion.
What happens next depends on whether the government will pursue forensic audits and prosecutions, as IMANI and its partners are demanding.
