CHRAJ Boss Is Part of Galamsey Problem

As the 2024 General Election draws fast and steadily close, in particular the 2024 Presidential Election, it appears as if the leaders of such statutorily mandated institutions as the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), among dozens of others, as well as the leaders of profit-making one-man/one-person churches, are finally beginning to regain their moral compass or authority and with the latter, the voices which they had deliberately and conveniently muted for most of the seven-plus years that the twice-elected Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has been at the helm of our national affairs (See “Akufo-Addo has disappointed Ghanaians in failed galamsey fight – CHRAJ Boss” Modernghana.com 9/9/24).

This is nothing short of damn preposterous because it is highly unlikely for the lame-duck President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to have been elected twice, consecutively, together with Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, of course, if the duo had not done much better, albeit woefully inadequately, relatively speaking, of course, to arrest the massive ecological disaster and the morally and existentially inexcusable destruction of the precious natural resources of the country that seriously threatens the very survival of some 35-million Ghanaian citizens and residents, than all the four previous Fourth-Republican governments combined.

Of significant mention and observation is the fact that it is only the Akufo-Addo Administration that has made any semblance of serious efforts to arrest the environmentally genocidal and predatory activities of illegal small-scale mining, better known as Galamasey, by causing to be researched, commissioned and published a comprehensive scientific assessment of the gravity of the problem, even while the twice-defeated, one-term former President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama vigorously campaigned with and criminally promoted the environmentally predatory activities of Galamsey as a viable alternative to the apparent inability of the government-of-the-day, in particular that of his immediate successor, to create an adequate number of economically sustainable jobs and employment opportunities for the massive pool of talented and able-bodied youths in the country.

The preceding problem has, of course, been directly due to decades of the deliberate and strategically unwise decision by the leadership of the National Democratic Congress and before the latter institutional apparatus, the late Chairman Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-led extortionate and visionless junta of the Provision National Defense Council (PNDC), to summarily liquidate the seminal Kwame Nkrumah-established factories and manufacturing plants – about 140 in total – that constituted the foundation of the historically unprecedented Ghana Industrial Holdings Corporation (GIHOC), the Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party’s version of the Western Industrial Revolution.

Even as a seismically defeated presidential candidate in the wake of the December 2016 General Election, Mr. Mahama criminally traipsed many mining communities in the country despicably and unconscionably promising to afford free rein or carte-blanche to the environmentally genocidal activities of Galamsey in the highly unlikely event of the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress’ being returned to Jubilee House or the Presidency, so that the man whom the late former President Rawlings described as the most thoroughgoing corrupt postcolonial Ghanaian politician “could correct his past mistakes” at the expense of the present progressive development of the country.

In other words, it is patently clear that reelecting the man who once ethnocentrically and fascistically called The Okyenhene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin, II, and the capital of Akyem-Abuakwa, namely, Kyebi, as “The Galamsey Capital of Ghana,” instead of providing effective and constructive solutions to this dire existential menace, would have Ghanaian voters return him to Jubilee House so that he could return the country to the Dumsor-blanketed past and literally suspend all the present progressive national development policy initiatives of the present Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party, such as the resuscitation of the former President John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-established National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which Mr. Mahama criminally bankrupted, and into which a newly elected President Akufo-Addo pumped some $2 billion (USD), money that could have been used to develop other equally critical sectors of the nation’s economy, such as agriculture and transportation and, in particular, the landmark and historically unprecedented Akufo-Addo-implemented Fee-Free Senior High, Technical, Vocational and STEM Education System which Candidate Mahama has publicly assured Ghanaians of his intention to scrap as his first order of presidential priority the second time around.

Put into plain and simple English, the truth of the matter is that Candidate John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama has absolutely no worthwhile talent or the capacity and the capability of resolving the country’s most pressing problems, especially in view of the fact that as already noted, Candidate Mahama is also widely known to have spent the 2020 General-Election Season vehemently and relentlessly promoting the environmentally deleterious activities of Galamsey, a treasonable act of heinous criminality and inexcusable moral depravity that nearly cost the New Patriotic Party its Parliamentary Majority by creating what has become known as a Hung Parliament. The evidence is readily available for all who care to know or verify the validity of the same.

In the case of Mr. Joseph Whittal, it is an open secret that like the rest of his coordinate or associate human rights and national security institutional gatekeepers, the admittedly curious decision by Nana Akufo-Addo to relax the Ban on Galamsey Activities, on the rather dubious grounds that “small-scale mining was being practiced all over the world,” was met with deathly silence, even as some of us Vanguard Anti-Galamsey Media Practitioners vehemently decried this most cynical and capricious policy reversal some four years ago, obviously with a self-serving eye and motive towards clinching a second term in office on his part.

Well, even as Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia adumbrated to the general Ghanaian public and registered and eligible voters not very long ago, electing Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” Dramani Mahama for a second nonconsecutive term would automatically make the former “Shit-Bombing” Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-appointed Communications Minister a lame-duck President. Which simply means that Candidate Mahama will be prohibited by Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution from running for a second consecutive term in office. Now, what the foregoing interpretation of the Constitution means is that a one-term President Mahama will not have any incentive to feel accountable to Ghanaian voters, since he will be barred from gunning for a third term in office, consecutively or nonconsecutively.

But there is an even greater problem of the kind of threat represented by former US President Donald John Trump, a publicly declared role-model of Ghana’s former President. And that threat comes in the form of the likelihood of Mr. Mahama attempting to use an NDC parliamentary majority to flagrantly amend Ghana’s already Indemnity-Clause-hobbled Constitution in order to both illegally extend his term in office and possibly destroy Ghana’s entire hard-won democratic cultural praxis, by installing a dictatorship of the kind that until very recently was the norm of most Continental African Countries.

We know the foregoing for a fact because in the recent past the globally infamous Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) Gravy-Train Driver has vigorously campaigned for the Presidency in the so-called Five Northern Regions on the mendacious grounds that Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution guaranteed the winner of every Presidential Election two automatic consecutive terms in office, mischievously citing the two consecutive electoral terms served by the late former President Rawlings and former President John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor as a foolproof evidence of his claim. In reality, Dear Reader, what the 1992 Constitution mandates is the chance of a creditably performing incumbent or substantive President to run for a second consecutive term in office.

Even so, the final authority rests with the Sovereign People of Ghana or Ghana’s Electorate to decide which presidential incumbent gets to rule the country for a second consecutive term in the polling booth, and expressly and primarily based on the previous performance record of the concerned presidential incumbent. Contrary to what the twice-defeated former President would have the members of the Global Ghanaian Community believe, it is not the automatic or the inalienable right of any presidential incumbent, let alone a former President who has already twice been given the boot and been placed on the payroll of a Retired President, even while engaged in active political activities, to dictate electoral policy or mandate to the Sovereign Ghanaian People. That is simply inexcusably absurd!

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
September 9, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]