Ashanti Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Bernard Antwi-Boasiako, has accused President John Mahama of reviving and rebranding the controversial Agyapa Royalties deal under a new name—GoldBod.
Speaking on Wontumi Morning Show, the NPP executive, popularly known as Chairman Wontumi, alleged that after the National Democratic Congress (NDC) strongly opposed the Agyapa initiative during Akufo-Addo’s administration, they have now adopted the same idea under a different name for their own political convenience.
“When Akufo-Addo introduced the Agyapa royalties deal, they rejected it outright and mobilized public resistance. Today, the same concept has returned, but now they call it GoldBod,” Wontumi stated.
The Agyapa Royalties deal, introduced in 2020, aimed to monetize Ghana’s mineral royalties by creating a special purpose vehicle—Agyapa Royalties Limited—through which the state could raise capital on the London Stock Exchange.
The deal was structured to allow Ghana to leverage its future mineral royalties for upfront investments in infrastructure and development.
Despite the government’s argument that the deal would maximize returns from gold production, the Agyapa arrangement was met with intense scrutiny and resistance from civil society organizations, anti-corruption campaigners, and the then opposition NDC, who raised concerns about transparency, valuation of assets, and possible loss of national control over a key resource.
In response to public pressure and a critical assessment by the Office of the Special Prosecutor—which flagged procedural breaches—the Akufo-Addo government eventually suspended the deal.
Chairman Wontumi believes the resurfacing of a similar structure under Mahama’s administration is not a coincidence but a quiet admission of the original plan’s merits.
“They saw it as a bad idea when we brought it up, but now they are repackaging it with a new label to make it look like their own brainchild,” he said.
