Ghana's oil find is not only to bring in revenue for development, but would also likely push for national institutional reforms, starting with the constitution to reduce the excessive powers vested in the executive.
Professor Joseph Atsu Ayee, a political scientist, who made the remark on Thursday, said the legislature also had to be clothed with adequate powers to hold the executive in check of possible malfeasance in the use of the oil proceeds.
In a lecture in Accra, Prof. Ayee, who is also the Dean of Faculty of Social Studies of the University of Ghana, called on the nation to change its political culture and rise above partisan politics.
He said the nation must also design credible institutions for the proper politico-economic management of the oil boom.
The lecture was on the theme; "Political Implications of the Discovery" and it was organized by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (GAAS), as part of a series of lectures dubbed: "The Challenges of the Oil Discovery in Ghana" to mark the 2008 Founder's Week celebrations of the Academy.
Prof Ayee noted that the politics of oil discovery went beyond stakeholder participation to issues of governance including who had authority to control the industry, decision-taking and how decision-makers were held accountable for their decisions.
It also dealt with decisions on production, distribution and use of resources, the level of local and international or private and public participation in the industry.
According to Prof. Ayee, governments had signed a "social contract" with the citizenry and owed it an obligation to manage the resources of the country, and the co-operation of the people with government depended on how well the governments managed the national resources.
"If the Government manages well, the citizens will also play their part well," Prof. Ayee said.
He observed that the discovery of oil had brought about hopes and expectations, but experience from other countries had showed that those expectations waned with time.
Prof. Ayee said another political implication of the discovery of oil was "policy learning" from previous policies and other countries that had operated in the industry. He observed that the situation had been "a litany of mismanagement of mining and other natural extracts".
Other problems had been poor record keeping, corruption and manipulation and lack of governmental effectiveness in some African countries that had oil.
"In Nigeria, there are serious problems over the oversight capacity of the Ministry of Petroleum," Prof Ayee said, adding that it was necessary that lessons were learned from the running of the mining and forestry sectors, from which the nation would be able to situate its oil and gas policies.
Prof. Ayee said the discovery would also affect the national sovereignty through the possible lack of local competencies and other production factors, in the face of multilaterals, who might attempt to dictate the direction of the industry.
He called for the examination of the enclave character of the oil sector, and the need for transparency and to make the established systems work.
Dr Yao Graham, Co-ordinator of the Third World Network, a civil society group, said very often, gas had not been projected when the story of oil was told.
He said donor influence in the form of funding, which remained an important part of national spending, would be reduced.
He said the experience of the mining sector had been one of an enclave, adding that, the oil industry would turn out to be much more an enclave than the other mining sectors.
Dr Graham called for the strengthening of procurement mechanisms in the oil industry, optimization of the local content share and coherence in local policies.
"All kinds of changes need to make things more democratic," Dr Graham said.
Prof Akilagpa Sawyerr, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, chaired the lecture.
He said the notion of Ghana becoming a middle income nation could not be achieved based on raw materials, but value addition and the need to address risks in the industrial sector.