Relocate Capital To Kintampo

Dr. Ken Agyeman Attafuah

Dr. Ken Agyeman Attafuah yesterday suggested the relocation of the nation's capital to Kintampo, using proceeds from oil revenue, a suggestion which attracted copious attention from his audience.

He was making a presentation during the Institute of Economic Affair (IEA) oil and gas series themed 'Managing The Political and Social Expectations of Ghana's Oil Discovery.'

He encouraged the use of oil proceeds for transformational development such as the relocation of the national capital because “Accra is choked and killing us all.

Every day, we waste too much time and too much fuel navigating to work and home; straining our fragile nerves too much everyday tolerating each other in our unplanned, gutter-choked and smelly neighbourhoods.”

For him, Accra must be kept as a commercial capital, but there must be a creation of a new administrative capital in Kintampo, adding “Kintampo will do just fine, it will render the capital equidistant to all regions of the country.”

To achieve this objective, he asked that 25 percent of the oil revenue for the first five years be invested in high-yielding projects like tolled roads, and use the proceeds for the construction of the new capital.

He pointed at Abuja in Nigeria, Johannesburg and Pretoria in South Africa, Yamousoukro in Cote d'Ivoire and Dar es Salaam and Dodoma in Tanzania as examples of similar projects.

A well-built city in the centre of the country, he posited, would transform the country in unimaginable ways.

According to him, if public consensus was built on such a vital national development project, it would be a tremendous step in managing the social and political expectations surrounding our oil and gas.

On the high expectations of Ghanaians about the potential of the newfound oil and gas to transform the country overnight, he advised the political elite to counsel their constituents, lest they are disappointed when these hopes are dashed.

Such dashed hopes, he noted, often lead to civil strife, charging the political elite to, for the sake of Ghana, “learn to do the impossible by postponing immediate gratification and the penchant for instant political convenience.

This demands, rather than yielding, to the intemperate agitations from partisan foot-soldiers and other sectarian groupings for immediate political dividends.”

He dismissed claims by sections of the communities claiming to be entitled to a special portion of oil proceeds by quoting the relevant portion of the constitution.

On the fears of Ghanaians about unmanaged social and political expectations surrounding the impending commercial production of oil and gas, he asked that measures such as the recognition by the political elite of the critical need to pull together “our collective knowledge, wisdom and experience to fashion a shared prosperity propelled by oil, and which is sustainable.”

The country's political elite, he said, have no excuse but to rise to the occasion and prudently manage both the revenue and the socio-political expectations of the oil so as to positively transform this country within a space of ten years.

The incumbent government, he stated, must display courage in toning down what he considered “wild, fuzzy, wishy-washy and unrealistic public expectations of the development manna, while at the same time transforming optimism and confidence in the future.”

Institutions such as the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice, National Commission for Civic Education among others, he said, should embark on educational programmes on the need for members of the public to tone down their expectations from the proceeds of the oil and gas.

The afternoon roundtable attracted a motley assemblage of personalities like Hon E.T. Mensah, Hon Inusah Fusseini and Prof Justice Kludze.

By A.R. Gomda