Open letter to Ransford Gyampo on Ghana’s lithium deal

Dear Ransford Gyampo,

It is extremely embarrassing to witness the scale of intellectual inconsistency and moral back-flipping that you have displayed on the issue of Ghana’s lithium agreements. You were not only against the previous government’s deal, you vehemently attacked it.

You mobilized chiefs, youth groups, and opinion leaders to reject the 10% royalty proposal. You lectured the entire nation with righteous indignation, insisting that Ghana deserved far more. You boldly cited Mexico, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina as superior models we must emulate.

You framed the matter as a patriotic crusade, a national struggle between Ghana’s long-term interest and a government you accused of shortchanging the country.

Yet today, after receiving a government appointment, you have suddenly discovered legal constraints, procedural patience, and the need to “engage” rather than criticize.

The same 5% royalty rate, which you once condemned as scandalous and completely unacceptable, has now become something you conveniently justify using the very same Act 794 that existed when you were attacking the previous administration’s 10%. At that time, you never learned on that law, you never asked Ghanaians to be patient, and you never argued that the statute was the obstacle.

Instead, you demanded renegotiation, insisted Ghana could get more, and chastised anyone who settled for less.

Now, you present your dramatic U-turn as enlightened governance. You downplay criticism of the current administration as propaganda, even though your own past criticisms were framed as noble patriotism.

This selective morality is not only disingenuous, it is corrosive to the very idea of principled civic advocacy. When you wrote to Sam Jonah condemning the previous deal because Ghana was receiving only 13%, you explicitly acknowledged that better global models existed and that Ghana could, and should, demand more.

That letter alone proves you fully understood that our laws can be amended, renegotiated, and improved. So why the sudden reverence for statutory limitations today? What changed, Ghana’s national interest or your own position?

The answer, unfortunately, is too obvious to miss.

And this is where the hypocrisy becomes unbearable. How does one explain the irony that you, Ransford Gyampo, the same man who refused to engage the previous government on a 10% royalty deal, now want Ghanaians to quietly dialogue and engage on a far worse 5% arrangement?

How can you justify the fact that when Ghana was being offered more, you mobilized chiefs, marched the youth, attacked ministers, and rejected every attempt at consultation, yet today, when the offer is significantly less, you want the nation to adopt a posture of patience and polite deliberation?

What changed, the figure, the principle, or merely the political convenience?

This alone is the clearest evidence that your commentary was never grounded in a stable moral philosophy but in a discretionary activism that fluctuates depending on who occupies power.

A man who once scolded a government for allegedly shortchanging Ghana now finds comfort defending a far inferior royalty by blaming a law that has been in place for more than a decade. The inconsistency is not minor, it is catastrophic.

It does not merely weaken your credibility, it completely collapses the intellectual foundation upon which you once stood. It exposes the long-held suspicion that your claimed fearless activism, though often decorated with grand rhetoric, has always been susceptible to personal interest and institutional comfort.

If a 10% royalty was so offensive to you that you openly rejected it without any attempt at dialogue, then how do you now find refuge urging citizens to “engage” on a 5% deal?

If the previous government deserved harsh condemnation for proposing more than the current administration is offering, then by your own logic, the present government deserves even greater condemnation.

Yet we see none of that energy today. Instead, we see a man twisting academic language to justify an inferior arrangement simply because he now operates within the corridors of power.

Prof. Gyampo, this is the very definition of hypocrisy, when one denounces a better deal but defends a worse one, not because facts changed but because one’s personal circumstances did.

It is when principles suddenly become negotiable the moment power provides comfort. It is when a loud critic of yesterday becomes an apologetic defender today without any coherent intellectual transition.

Your sudden devotion to Act 794 is unconvincing, your call for dialogue suspicious, and your plea for patience intellectually bankrupt. You have contradicted your own standard so dramatically that the only constant left is your political convenience.

Your transformation from a fiery critic to a cautious apologist is not the maturity of thought you want the public to believe, it is the evaporation of conviction.

And it confirms what many suspected but could not conclusively prove until now, that your activism was never rooted in immutable principle but in selective outrage, deployed only when it suited your political alignment.

In the end, your own words have betrayed you. Your own conduct has exposed you.

The Gyampo of yesterday would have condemned the Gyampo of today. And when a man becomes the contradiction of his own principles, his moral authority collapses under the weight of his own hypocrisy.

By Akaneweo Kabiru Abdul