Leader of the Alliance of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in the extractive sector, Dr Steve Manteaw says media reports on the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice (CCJ) dismissing the suit against the Gold Royalties Monetisation Transaction arrangement, popularly referred to as the Agyapa deal is “a bit misleading.”
“Misleading in the sense that the case before the ECOWAS court was not for the court to determine the merit of Agyapa. It bordered heavily on human rights and sovereign rights of citizens as to what is done with their natural resources and this is what the court pronounced on and not the merit of Agyapa or not,” he added.
Dr Manteaw said this in an interview with Umaru Sanda Amadu on Eyewitness News on Citi FM in Accra on Thursday.
“There is an extensive quotation on the African Charter on Human Rights which clearly indicates that the matter before the court had more to do with human rights, the sovereign rights of citizens of Ghana over their natural resources,” he stated.
As such, Dr Manteaw said there was a need for the full reasoning of the ruling before a proper analysis could be made.
Three anti-corruption groups — Transparency International, Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) and the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) — dragged the government to the CCJ in December 2020, seeking an order to halt the Agyapa deal.
It was the case of the applicants that the Agyapa deal was dominated by “politically exposed persons” and also violated the rights of Ghanaians to have permanent sovereignty over the country’s natural resources as provided under the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.
