RESPONSE TO THE “INQUISITIVE OBSERVER”

THE 592 GUARDIAN | EDITORIAL RESPONSE

The Inquisitive Observer’s Gulf Analogy Cannot Survive Contact With Guyanese Facts

A response to “The Inquisitive Observer,” published in Guyana Chronicle

The column in question is theoretically coherent and factually bankrupt. Its author correctly identifies that oil-rich states must convert hydrocarbon revenues into durable human capital — the UAE and Qatar offer genuine instructive precedents on that point. The argument collapses, however, the moment it arrives in Guyana, because the writer has chosen as his Exhibit A a programme that is itself a study in procurement failure, institutional opacity, and unresolved accountability.

GOAL is not a model. GOAL is a warning.

In early 2025, Staffordshire University publicly denied any affiliation with courses being offered under the GOAL initiative through a third-party intermediary, the International School Development Consortium (ISDC). Hundreds of Guyanese students had enrolled under the impression that they were earning internationally recognised degrees, only to discover that Staffordshire University had never authorised those courses.

Students registered for Maritime Affairs found themselves assigned Business and Finance modules. Those pursuing psychology and engineering encountered equivalent programme mismatches. These are not administrative anomalies. These are systemic failures of due diligence at the ministerial level.
The government’s response was not accountability — it was deflection. Vice President Jagdeo attributed the crisis to a change in management at the university, dismissed characterisations of fraud, and assured the public that a resolution was being sought through a meeting in London.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Ashni Singh redirected press inquiries about GOAL’s financial arrangements with ISDC to GOAL Director Professor Jacob Opadeyi — who initially promised the information by March 17, and then did not provide it. 
The financial dimension alone demands a forensic reckoning. In 2024, the Government injected $4 billion into GOAL — just $100 million more than the total allocation to the University of Guyana, Guyana’s only public tertiary institution.

The public is entitled to know how much of that $4 billion flowed to ISDC, what contractual oversight existed, and who bears liability for the breach.

To date, those questions remain unanswered.
Accountability analyst Christopher Ram called on the President to pause the programme, release the full ISDC contract, publish a detailed breakdown of all payments made, and subject GOAL to a forensic audit.

That call has not been acted upon.                                                    The writer’s Gulf comparison also exposes a structural contradiction he does not address. Qatar’s Education for a New Era initiative worked precisely because it was governed by a Supreme Education Council, an independent Education Institute, and an Evaluation Institute with a mandate to track outcomes against labour market needs. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 embeds education reform within a broader diversification architecture with measurable sectoral targets. The UAE’s early investments included direct grants to overseas students conditioned on return and service to national institutions. These were not scholarship disbursements laundered through unvetted intermediaries. They were governed ecosystems.

What does Guyana have in comparative terms? A programme operated outside normal procurement architecture, directed by an official who has a documented political relationship with the President — having supervised his doctoral dissertation, a thesis that has never been made public — and shielded from parliamentary scrutiny. GOAL has no published outcome data, no accreditation verification protocol, and no independent evaluation body. The writer praises the inputs while declining to examine the outputs.

Here, the Exxon question becomes decisive. ExxonMobil Guyana President Alistair Routledge recently announced the commissioning of a comprehensive industrial baseline study to assess Guyana’s labour capacity and future needs, stating explicitly that “it is becoming harder to find additional Guyanese workers, particularly those with the advanced skills and expertise required by a highly technical industry such as oil and gas.” This is not a peripheral data point. This is the principal employer in Guyana’s oil sector — the very sector that GOAL’s scholarships are ostensibly meant to serve — publicly declaring that the skilled labour deficit is widening, not closing. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued 13,713 work permits to foreign nationals in 2024, citing lack of local skills as the rationale. 

If GOAL were functioning as the writer claims — producing the engineers, ICT specialists, and technical professionals Guyana needs — Exxon would not be commissioning a skills gap study. The Ministry would not be importing nearly 14,000 foreign workers. The programme’s own graduation statistics would be visible in labour market outcomes. They are not.

The Inquisitive Observer’s instinct — that education is the indispensable instrument of resource nationalism — is correct in principle. The 592 Guardian has made that argument repeatedly. But honouring that principle demands that we apply it honestly. The Gulf states built enduring educational ecosystems on transparency, independent governance, and outcome accountability. Guyana has built a billion-dollar scholarship programme on opaque procurement, a politically connected director, a university partner that publicly disowned its association with the programme, and a government that silenced inquiry rather than invited it.

The graduates celebrating at GOAL’s recent ceremony are not the problem. They deserve recognition for their effort and better from their government. The problem is that a columnist has offered those graduates — and the Guyanese public — a flattering analogy in place of the accountability those graduates are owed.
Celebrating graduations while the ISDC liability question remains unresolved, while no forensic audit has been conducted, and while ExxonMobil is commissioning the skills gap survey the government’s own programme should have made unnecessary — this is not economic statecraft. It is state-managed amnesia.

The 592 Guardian calls, once again, for the immediate release of all GOAL-ISDC financial transactions, an independent forensic audit of the programme’s expenditures, a published accreditation verification report for every partner institution, and the tabling of all GOAL contractual arrangements before the National Assembly.

The oil will not wait. Neither will the facts.

The 592 Guardian is an independent accountability journalism outlet covering Guyanese governance, extractive industry, and public finance.