Aisha Huang Conundrum, Shame of Ghana

This single, individual Chinese woman seems to have become the metaphorical “Monkey Wrench” in the battle against the Galamsey, or the illegal small-scale mining industry. In China, where she was born and raised, we are reliably informed that the punishment for this predatory and wantonly environmentally destructive activity is death by firing squad. Anybody can check this fact or report and either affirm or contradict the same. At any rate, it is common knowledge that the Chinese are among the foremost studious protectors of waterbodies, forestry resources and the balance of their ecological system at large, among the global comity of nations. And right here in Ghana, we have known the deleterious impact of the sort of ecological destabilization engendered by the toxic and predatory activities of Galamsey for generations. So, why are our politicians and traditional rulers pretending as if Ghanaian humanity is an exception to the laws of environmental protection as the very fundamental basis upon which both our short- and long-term survival depends?

We are either a clueless bunch of sub-humans who do not deserve the sympathy of the global community of concerned environmental activists and protectors, or we simply have literally written off the value of our own lives as ones that are merely incidental to those of the rest of humanity. Else, the entire national discourse on the prompt and the imperative need to root out the Galamsey Menace would not be so scandalously hinged upon the clearly peripheral role of one Chinese woman who appears to have been introduced into this country, that is, the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, by the nihilistic operatives of the late Chairman Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-led “revolutionary” juggernaut of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to wipe out Ghanaian humanity within a generation or two.

That the predatory power of Ms. Huang easily supersedes that of the entirety of the power of the Ghana Armed Forces, vis-à-vis the protection of our country from unarguably the deadliest act of terrorism, to wit, genocidal environmental terrorism of apocalyptic proportions, the likes of which has never be witnessed in the aftermath of a half-millennium of the Transatlantic Enslavement of African Humanity, may very well be a gross understatement. The grim and most painful fact of the matter, though, is that the Galamsey Menace has a diddly little to absolutely nothing to do with the Aisha Huangs and the Chinese-born Monica immigrants of Ghana, as Capt. Nkrabea Effah Dartey, the lawyer for Ms. Huang and former Deputy Minister in the John Agyekum-Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the very same political party that which presently rules Ghana, told the host of an Accra-based popular current affairs program the other day.

In short, the Galamsey Menace is veritably and decidedly a structural, systemic and an institutional defect which has everything to do with the caliber of our leadership and our collective sense of national self-worth and civic and social responsibility (See “Aisha Huang Was Arrested Three Times and Let Off the Hook Under NDC – Charles Bissue” Modernghana.com 9/16/22). But we are also given to believe and understand that there is another lurid and scandalously salacious aspect and edge to the Aisha Huang Story, which could be simply cast in terms of the pathologically coital incontinence of some of our democratically elected Ghanaian leaders and their cronies and associates among the membership of the general population and, perhaps, even some legitimately invested Ghanaian rulers. And that tale or legend has it that Ms. Huang has compiled a long list of the names of some very prominent and influential politicians and leaders engaged in acts of compromise, in the main, sexual escapades with either Madam Huang herself or some commercial-sex traders recruited straight out of China or Chinese-born prostitutes locally recruited for the express purpose of using these commercial-sex workers to strategically ensure the smooth operation of Ms. Huang’s toxic Galamsey business enterprise.

We are further informed that there are also available recordings of the sexual encounters of many of these sex workers and escorts with some of these Ghanaian policymakers and highly placed executive government operatives. Significantly, the Akufo-Addo Presidential Staffer by the name of Charles Bissue, who recently reportedly let on to a host of the Accra-based Joy News Radio and Television Network that Madam Huang was in the past arrested by operatives of the erstwhile John Dramani Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress at least on three separate occasions and promptly let off the hook that many times, was himself implicated in a criminally collusive racket with some Galameyers, while Mr. Bissue was Secretary to the Akufo-Addo-established Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining.

Back then, as yours truly vividly recalls, the Chief Coordinator of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, was also brought up on charges of having deliberately turned a blind eye while some Galamsey predators, including his own son or a couple of adult sons, were criminally engaged in this wanton environmentally destructive activity. Now, what the preceding means is that prominent and influential Presidential Staffers like Mr. Bissue abjectly lack the requisite moral authority and/or credibility to even challenge his main political opponents of the National Democratic Congress who have been having a field day hypocritically pretending as if Ms. Huang were the unique and singular creation of the leadership of the New Patriotic Party.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

September 17, 2022

E-mail: [email protected]