- The Hidden Hands Behind a Ghana Mining Hit Job
When British journalist Jonathan Clayton began reaching out to sources in Ghana over President John Dramani Mahama’s London investment push, he presented his inquiry as a standard journalistic exercise.
But WhatsApp exchanges reviewed by NorvanReports now raise serious questions about whether the eventual publication by The Times of London would be and was truly going to be an independent piece of journalism or whether it will became the vehicle for a carefully assembled reputational attack against Ghana’s President, his brother Ibrahim Mahama, and Engineers & Planners, one of Ghana’s leading indigenous mining services companies.
The NorvanReports team has been vindicated, as the article, published under the explosive headline “Ghana president accused of ‘land grab’ over gold mines,” relied heavily on allegations of political favouritism, investor unease, and so-called resource nationalism. Yet the pattern emerging from private exchanges between Clayton and persons connected to the story suggests something more troubling: a story whose frame appeared to have been shaped before all sides had been fairly weighed.
At the heart of the matter is not whether journalists should ask hard questions. They should. The issue is whether a foreign correspondent, writing for one of the world’s most influential newspapers, allowed himself to become the conduit for commercial and political actors seeking to launder a private mining dispute into an international governance scandal.
The WhatsApp trail reviewed by NorvanReports shows Clayton introducing himself from a French telephone number, +33 7 45 48 99 85, as “Jonathan Clayton.” In the exchanges, he indicated he was working on questions around the allegations being made against Ibrahim Mahama and Engineers & Planners.
At one point, after being asked whether questions from Gold Fields and James Wallbank of Ibaera Capital formed part of his list of questions, Clayton replied:
“Yes. All questions put together in there but are from me in my capacity as Times.”
He continued:
“I decide the questions on the basis of my discussions and interview interviews with them.”
Then came a line that is central to understanding the story’s posture:
“I am not working for them any more than I am working for you. I am just an intermediary trying to get a good story.”
That statement, perhaps intended as a defence of neutrality, instead raises the very question now at the centre of the controversy. Why would a journalist describe himself as “an intermediary” while assembling a story involving rival commercial interests, opposition political actors and one of Ghana’s most sensitive mining-sector disputes?
Journalists are not intermediaries between factions. They are supposed to be independent verifiers of fact.
The messages show that Clayton had received information from actors with direct interests in the matter. In one exchange, he forwarded contact details for Gold Fields’ Executive Vice President for External Affairs, Jongisa Magagula. Shortly after, he forwarded a link to a Steptoe event titled “The Sovereign’s Gambit: Strategic Plays on a Shifting Geopolitical Chessboard.”
The accompanying message stated:
“Yes – although ‘conference’ may be overstating what we did. We organised an evening seminar that was attended by approximately 60 people who were concerned about resource nationalism and Ghana was a key topic of discussion.”
The message continued:
“You could definitely reference the fact that Steptoe, a leading international firm specialising in Africa-related disputes, hosted 60 concerned investors in Perth to discuss concerns around Ghana resource nationalism.”
That framing is revealing. Before Ghanaian readers were presented with a story about a supposed “land grab,” the international narrative was already being discussed in the language of investor anxiety, resource nationalism and geopolitical risk.
This is where journalism begins to blur dangerously into campaign architecture.
The Times story did not simply report concerns. It amplified a politically loaded phrase “land grab” and placed it directly in the headline. The phrase was attributed to Wisdom Gomashie, identified in the publication as co-head of the opposition New Patriotic Party’s mining committee.
Clayton’s article quoted Gomashie as describing Ghana’s new mining codes as “an outright land grab.” The same language became the central headline frame through which readers in London and across the world were invited to understand Ghana’s mining policy, President Mahama’s investment drive, and Engineers & Planners’ role in the sector.
Yet NorvanReports understands that senior figures within the opposition party distanced themselves from the attack when contacted. That makes the role of Wisdom Gomashie and the three other opposition-linked persons mentioned by Clayton even more significant.
If the party leadership was unwilling to formally own the allegation, why was the story allowed to ride so heavily on the line of one opposition figure? And why was that line elevated into the global headline?
This is not a minor editorial choice. A headline in The Times of London carries diplomatic, commercial and reputational consequences. It travels into boardrooms, embassies, investor briefings, risk reports and arbitration narratives. It can damage a country’s investment campaign. It can weaken a government’s international message. It can prejudice public perception around private commercial disputes.
That is why the use of Gomashie’s quote as the organising frame of the story deserves scrutiny.
The WhatsApp messages also show Clayton received and asked about a set of questions that went far beyond ordinary background inquiry. Some of the questions targeted Ibrahim Mahama’s relationship with the President, including whether the President had travelled on aircraft owned, leased or controlled by Ibrahim Mahama or his companies, and whether private travel arrangements could create a perception of conflict of interest.
Other questions asked why Engineers & Planners appeared frequently in major mining disputes and transactions in Ghana, what work had been carried out at the Black Volta project, and whether E&P would comply if an ICC tribunal ruled against it.
The nature of the questions suggests that the story was not merely about mining policy. It was about constructing a broader public-interest attack around the President, his brother, Ghana’s investment reputation and the legitimacy of indigenous participation in the mining sector.
Clayton was also sent documents by the other side of the story, including documents described in the WhatsApp exchanges as a 2023 notice of demobilisation relating to Damang, a 2024 no-objection letter from the Government of Ghana for E&P to acquire Damang from Gold Fields, a recommendation letter from Gold Fields to the Government for E&P to continue operating at Damang, and proof of payment relating to the Black Volta Project.
Those materials were not minor. They went directly to the chronology, the commercial background and the question of whether the transactions being portrayed as politically driven were in fact rooted in processes that predated the current Mahama administration.
Yet the final article, as published, leaned heavily into the language of political favouritism, foreign investor anxiety and alleged appropriation.
That is the essence of the concern.
A journalist may speak to Gold Fields. A journalist may speak to Ibaera. A journalist may speak to opposition politicians. A journalist may ask uncomfortable questions of Engineers & Planners. None of that is improper in itself.
But when the story that emerges mirrors the interests of actors fighting commercial battles, when its headline is lifted from an opposition figure whose party leaders reportedly did not want to formally own the attack, and when the journalist himself tells a source that questions from commercial actors were “all put together” but issued in his own capacity as The Times, the public is entitled to ask whether journalism was used as cover for something else.
For Ghana, the implications go beyond one newspaper article.
This is about whether foreign commercial interests, aided by local political actors, can internationalise private disputes by presenting them as governance crises. It is about whether Ghanaian companies that rise in strategic sectors will always be vulnerable to reputational warfare once they begin to compete with entrenched foreign interests. It is also about whether opposition politics should be used to feed external campaigns that damage the country’s investment image in order to score domestic political points.
Wisdom Gomashie and those who fed this narrative must answer a simple question: were they speaking for Ghana’s national interest, for their party, or for external interests unhappy with the direction of Ghana’s mining sector?
The three other opposition-linked persons whose names were referenced by Clayton also owe the Ghanaian public an explanation. If they were part of the conversations that helped shape this international attack, then they cannot hide behind the byline of a British journalist while Ghana carries the reputational cost.
There is a legitimate debate to be had about resource nationalism, local participation, mining governance and investor confidence. Ghana must have that debate openly and honestly. But that debate cannot be hijacked by commercial losers, political opportunists and foreign media framing designed to make Ghana look lawless before the world.
The article in The Times was presented as journalism. But the evidence reviewed by NorvanReports suggests it carried the fingerprints of a coordinated reputational operation.
Jonathan Clayton may insist he was only “trying to get a good story.” But a good story is not built by becoming an “intermediary” between vested interests. A good story tests claims, interrogates motives, weighs evidence, and resists being used.
On this occasion, the result was not a fair account of Ghana’s mining sector. It was a hatchet job dressed in the clothes of international journalism.
And the people who helped build it from London boardrooms to local political circles in Accra must now be exposed.
