- Lawyer Bobby Banson fires back at Bright Simons over Damang, arguing E&P earned its shot
The fight over who deserves control of the Damang mine has now sharpened into something more consequential than a licensing dispute. It is becoming a test of whether Ghana is genuinely prepared to let a local mining services firm graduate into full asset control or whether, at the decisive moment, every objection will be marshalled to keep that transition permanently out of reach.
This comes as the Goldfields is readying itself to handover the mine this week on April 18, 2026, as already widely publicised in the media. Engineers & Planners (E&P) would take over the mine after they emerged as the winner of a bidding or tender conducted by the Minerals Commission on behalf of their parent Ministry and the government.
The thrust of the defence mounted by lawyer Bobby Banson and former Lands and Natural Resources Minister Inusah Fuseini on Newsfile on JoyNews over the weekend was where both men pushed back against the criticisms advanced by Bright Simons over the award of the Damang mine to Engineers & Planners (E&P). Far from a fatally compromised process as pitched by Bright Simons, their argument, which was straightforward, stated that many of the issues raised against E&P were either exaggerated, misplaced, or insufficient to overturn the logic of the decision itself.
At the centre of the dispute is Bright Simons’ suggestion that the Damang process had troubling optics: an unusually compressed tender window, legal ambiguity around a 100 per cent Ghanaian requirement, doubts about E&P’s ability to run a full-scale mine, and the political sensitivity of the company’s ownership structure. But lawyer Banson’s response was to strip the debate back to what he appeared to see as the decisive question: who, among the indigenous contenders, had actually demonstrated sustained operating competence on the asset in question? His answer was unequivocal that only E&P has.
That argument is strengthened by the operational record. E&P has been the sole contractor at Damang since 2018, working on what defenders of the award described as one of the most technically demanding rock formations in Africa. To Lawyer Banson, that history is not a side note; it is the core evidence. The criticism that E&P has only been a contractor, and therefore should not be trusted as a mine owner, was presented by critics as a serious distinction. But Banson’s position, supported by Mr. Fuseini’s broader defence of the process, suggests the objection is thinner than it first appears. If years of direct operational command over blasting, hauling, and mine-site execution do not count as preparation, then the threshold for local transition begins to look permanently elastic.
This is where the defence most directly blunted Mr. Simons’ case. The criticism that E&P does not itself embody every specialised function of modern mine management geology, metallurgy, treasury and finance may sound weighty in abstract terms, but Lawyer Banson’s and Fuseini’s combined logic was that such an argument confuses completeness with capability. Mining companies do not operate in isolation; they structure competence, hire expertise, build special purpose vehicles and assemble technical capacity. Supporters of the award pointed to the creation of Damang Gold Mines Ltd (DGML) within E&P’s group structure precisely to align with Minerals Commission preferences separating the lessee from the operator. In that sense, the attempt to portray E&P’s contractor background as disqualifying looked less like a fatal flaw than like a refusal to acknowledge the normal architecture of modern mining operations.
Mr. Fuseini’s contribution was important because it widened the defence beyond company-specific advocacy into policy logic. As a former Lands Minister, his intervention carried institutional weight. The underlying message was that Ghana cannot credibly speak of indigenisation while recoiling each time a local company reaches the point of inheritance. The Damang case, read this way, is not an aberration but the practical expression of a deeper policy shift: moving away from the expectation that foreign operators enjoy effortless continuity and towards a system in which local participation can mature into control.
This is why the claim that the seven-day tender period, by itself, proves unfairness was treated as unpersuasive. The timeline was certainly tight. But supporters of the outcome argued that the context mattered: the imminent expiry of Gold Fields’ extended lease on April 18 limited the state’s options, while some interested companies had already been tracking the asset and expressing interest well before the formal process opened. On this view, the compressed schedule was not ideal, but it was not the decisive evidence critics wanted it to be. It reflected legal and operational urgency, not necessarily manipulation.
The same pattern applies to the wider optics argument. Mr Simons’ concerns over political exposure and perceptions of state capture were trivial in themselves at this time. Lawyer Banson’s rebuttal, reinforced by Fuseini’s policy framing, suggests that optics cannot be allowed to become a veto on merit where operational evidence points the other way. Otherwise, local firms tied, however indirectly, to political controversy would be judged by a harsher and more shifting standard than foreign incumbents ever faced. The implication is not that scrutiny should disappear, but that scrutiny must still end in an evidence-based conclusion. In this case, the conclusion advanced by the defence was that E&P’s record outweighed the suspicions built around its ownership profile.
That makes the Bright Simons critique look, in the eyes of lawyer Banson and Mr Fuseini, less like a devastating exposure of the Damang process and more like an accumulation of objections that never quite reach the level of disqualifying substance. The objections raise noise; they do not, on the defense’s reading, overturn the main fact pattern. Two bidders reportedly fell at basic hurdles. E&P emerged as the highest scorer. It had years of operating experience at Damang. And the state, faced with lease expiry and a declared intention to deepen indigenous control, followed through.
That is why this debate matters beyond one mine. It is central to Ghana’s extractive future. If E&P, after years on the asset, after demonstrating technical presence, and after emerging through the process as the leading indigenous candidate, can still be told that the transition is too politically uncomfortable to accept, then indigenisation risks becoming a permanently deferred promise.
In that sense, Lawyer Bobby Banson’s intervention, strengthened by Inusah Fuseini’s backing on Newsfile on JoyNews was not merely a defence of a company. It was a defence of a principle: that Ghanaian firms cannot be asked to build capacity for years and then be denied legitimacy at the moment when that capacity is meant to count.
