West Africa Launches Anti
Corruption Agency
An
institute to combat mismanagement and corruption by
promoting transparency and accountability in the
management of revenues in resource rich West Africa
has been launched.
The Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA)
launched the West Africa Resource Watch (WARW), in
Dakar Senegal.
Chairman of the Board of OSIWA, Mr Elhaj Sy,
launched the regional anti corruption watchdog along
with a 250-page report titled: “Natural Resource
Management Capacity in West Africa.”
The report contains the outcome of studies sponsored
by OSIWA and conducted in seven West African
countries namely, Nigeria, Chad, Ivory Coast, Guinea
Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Ghana, and Sierra Leone to
assess the transparent, accountable, equitable and
sustainable management of natural resources.
Mandate
The goal of WARW, according to its Coordinator, Mr.
Dayo Olaide, is to create “an open society where
there is citizens’ participation in decision making,
transparency and accountability in economic policy
making and in the generation and use of public
resources towards equity and social justice.”
Mr. Olaide said WARW would mobilise technical and
financial resources to increase the voice of civil
society, advocate for responsive use of resource
revenues and strengthen key government agencies,
laws and regulations that guide extractive
operations and use of resource revenues.
He announced that WARW had established a Resource
Documentation Centre to promote scholarly research
and knowledge in critical areas of natural resource
and environmental management to stimulate
evidence-based advocacy among civil society
organizations and promote exchanges among academics,
professionals and policy makers in the sub-region.
Indictment
Speaking at the occasion, the Executive Director of
OSIWA, Dr. Nana Tanko, noted that most of the
governments in the region that had embraced the
Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)
are only paying lip-service to the concept so as “to
be seen as doing the right thing.”
She however said, OSIWA welcomed the willingness by
companies to declare what they pay to governments as
royalties and also welcomed the agreement by
governments to declare what they receive as revenues
from natural resources.
Dr. Tanko stressed that OSIWA was committed to
building the capacity of civil society organizations
and research institutes to conduct research and
advocacy on the issues, which are very technical,
and to engage with governments. She identified WARW
as a framework through which this commitment could
be realized.
Scorecard
Presenting the report, Mr. Bishop Akolgo, the
Executive Director of the Integrated Social
Development Centre, (ISODEC), in Ghana who
coordinated the research, said that none of the
countries surveyed had precise information about the
quantity and quality of their natural resources and
none of them also had the internal capacity to
monitor the quantities of the natural resources
actually being extracted by the international
companies.
He said in almost in all the cases, the natural
resources were being shipped abroad for processing
as there was little or no processing of the
resources being done in the countries where they are
extracted.
Mr. Akolgo also observed that all the countries have
“stability clauses” in their contracts with the
international companies exploiting their natural
resources and that these clauses had made
modification of the contracts to increase
governments’ take during rising prices difficult.
This, he said, had become particularly important
because most of the contracts were drawn up between
15 and 20 years ago when the prices of the
commodities were very low.
Besides the stability clauses, all the countries
also have various generous exemptions to the
international companies as incentives.
Recommendation
Mr. Akolgo recommended that the States should take
advantage of the current high prices of different
natural resources to re-visit these contracts. He
urged governments to have visions of how to use
extractives to transform the national economies and
the society.
Dr. Tanko said WARW and the report will also be
launched in each of the countries where the needs
assessment was conducted.
PR/Qasim/Yinka