An opposition spokesperson has called for parliamentary scrutiny of the Damang Mine contract awarded to Engineers and Planners Limited (E&P), framing the public debate around whether the deal constitutes state capture or a legitimate business transaction.
Alfred Thompson of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Communications Team, speaking on Joy Prime’s AM Show on Thursday, April 9, said the award of the Damang Mining Lease to E&P, a company owned by Ibrahim Mahama, the younger brother of President John Dramani Mahama, was generating genuine questions that the government needed to answer clearly.
“Is it state capture, or is it a genuine business that is making income and giving it back to society? These are genuine questions that we are asking,” Thompson said.
He acknowledged that the concern was not primarily about E&P’s technical capacity, but about public perception and the optics of a sitting president’s brother being awarded a major national mining asset.
Thompson called for Parliament to step in and provide a formal review of the terms of the contract, saying the ordinary Ghanaian deserved a clear basis on which to form a judgment. “We are waiting for Parliament to see what Parliament will say. We need it for the ordinary Ghanaian to judge,” he said.
His comments add opposition political pressure to scrutiny already building around the deal. The parliamentary minority has raised concerns about what it describes as a lack of transparency and fairness in the process, with the Deputy Ranking Member on Parliament’s Lands and Natural Resources Committee, Akwasi Konadu, questioning the speed and structure of the procurement process and whether it allowed for adequate scrutiny or competitive participation.
The parliamentary minority has also announced plans to petition the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) over the process, while the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) has separately called for the full assessment report to be published.
Supporters of the award have pushed back. Minerals Commission Tender Committee member Collins Dauda defended the process, saying E&P had been operating at Damang long before President John Dramani Mahama assumed office, and that the company’s technical capacity and track record justified its selection.
E&P scored 93.15 percent in the competitive evaluation and was the only bidder to demonstrate access to financing meeting the US$500 million minimum threshold, with the Tender Committee concluding that the company demonstrated the highest capability to operate the mine.
Gold Fields is scheduled to formally hand the Damang Mine to the Ghanaian state on April 18, 2026, with a government-appointed transition team set to assume interim operational control from April 19, pending formalisation of the E&P arrangement.
Thompson also used the occasion to raise broader concerns about the difficulty Ghanaian entrepreneurs face in accessing support to scale their businesses internationally, though he acknowledged that E&P, if its capacity is genuine, deserved backing.
