Speakers at a public forum to discuss the alleged intention of government to sell its stake in the Agricultural Development Bank to Stanbic Bank, on Friday roundly condemned the move, suggesting that it lacked common sense.

Speaker after speaker at the forum organised by the Socialist Forum, lambasted the government and said while flimsy and myopic reasons have been advanced to attempt a justification of a prized national asset, the whole move also betrayed the NPP government as one out to mortgage the country, caring much less for what happens to its citizens.

Sanjay Mirchandani, Public Relations Officer for the Senior Staff Association of ADB, who led a number of ADB staff to the discussion, said if government managed to sell off the bank to another interest, more so a foreign one, it would have succeeded in handing on a silver platter, the nation’s security.

He said the Bank’s strategic role in ensuring that critical support, financial and otherwise, reached the nation’s farmers to boost agricultural production and ensure food security, has been very crucial over the years.

Sanjay Mirchandani said if the citizenry had enough to eat, it translated into peace of mind and consequently improves national security.

He said the opposition against the sale of the bank should not be limited to the alleged immediate interest expressed by Stanbic, and added that even though he saw no wrong in a bank seeking to grow its interest, ADB was so special an asset that must be protected at all cost.

“Can we entrust the security of the state, in terms of food security, into the hands of foreign interests?…I don’t think Osageyfo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah had any doubt in his mind when he set up the Agricultural Development Bank in 1965 and the role that he wanted the bank to play to ensure credit to our rural farmers…How much is the security of the state worth?”

He said any business interested in investing in the agricultural sector should be encouraged to engender competition in the sector to better the lot of the Ghanaian farmer, rather than trading off the national asset that is doing healthily as a business.

“We all need to look at this issue very dispassionately and see what is in the interest of this country.”

Kwasi Pratt Jnr., editor of Weekly Insight newspaper said every Ghanaian ought to reject the proposed sale of the bank because the government has no business whatsoever in embarking on that reckless venture.

He said among reasons he has heard offered by officialdom for the sale of the state’s over 48 percent interest in ADB to Stanbic is that Stanbic is a very big bank.

Kwasi Pratt said rather than being motivated by the professed size of Stanbic for Ghana to grow ADB and other assets to equally appreciable sizes, officialdom continue to poke the rather unbelievable excuse as justification.

“This is a most ridiculous statement which is made by people who claim to be intellectuals and so on, and you can’t believe their stupidity, extreme stupidity… Stanbic is big so what? The issue is not about whether Stanbic is big or whether ADB is small or Standard Chartered is fat and so on. Those are not the arguments. The argument is that the people of Ghana have established a bank to look after their interest, and is that bank performing that role? That is the critical question.

“Now the other ridiculous thing that I have heard, and I’m not surprised it comes from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, they have said so many ridiculous things in the past …This time, they are telling us that the Bank of Ghana is a regulator and that if the Bank of Ghana has a little more than 48 percent shares, in the Agricultural Development Bank, it would amount to conflict of interest situation because the bank as a regulator should stand in the middle and make sure that everything is fine between us and all the other operating banks. That is absolutely nonsensical and is absolutely nonsensical because the Bank of Ghana is our bank. The Bank of Ghana is established and run by the people of Ghana with their taxes and through the systems of governance. That is our central bank and that bank was established first and foremost to protect Ghanaian interest in the banking sector.”

Kwasi Pratt said the Bank of Ghana is not a mutual arbiter to referee between banks, but has a core mandate to resolve issues in the national interest and therefore cannot be said to be in conflict with its interest in the ADB.

He warned that government could pay dearly if it persisted in its desire to sell the bank, claiming that he had sighted documents from Stanbic to government suggesting an eventual total buy-up of the ADB.

Kwasi Pratt said the ADB sale issue would surely be made an election issue if government failed to heed the call to back off, and he was prepared to raise the debate at a higher pedestal.

The NDC MP for Jomoro, Hon Lee Ocran, urged the youth especially to stand up to the property owning philosophy of the ruling government else they would wake up in the near future to find out they have no legacy left to build upon.

He said beside the ADB, the government had lined up a good number of national assets, including the Volta River Authority and the Tema Oil Refinery for sale and urged the youth to resist those transactions.

He said the minority, and a handful of NPP MPs opposed to the deals may protest and speak their minds, however they would be outvoted when it comes to numbers, and suggested that the youth, with a viable interest in the future of the state, must raise their voices to force government to proper conduct.