Why Is The Okuapemanhene Playing Politics with the Galamsey Menace?

If I recall correctly, The Okuapemanhene, Oseadeεyכ Kwasi Akuffo III, was a virtually anonymous denizen of New York City’s Borough of The Bronx and a resident of the famous Ghanaian-majority tenement complex called Tracey Towers, prior to his ritual incubation, seclusion or quarantining and enstoolment as Paramount Chief of the Akuapem Traditional Area of Ghana’s Eastern Region. Which does not really imply much because the author never officially met nor was ever introduced to this otherwise much-spoken-about remarkable young man, at least in the opinion of several Tracey Towers’ residents of Ghanaian descent and former neighbors of Nana Kwasi Akuffo in his pre-regius existence.

But what brings Yours Truly to the subject of Galamsey or small-scale illegal mining and Nana Kwasi Akuffo’s rather strange and bizarre connection to the same is a news story captioned “Galamsey: Okuapehene Blows Alarm Over ‘Secret’ Issuance of Prospecting License for Mining in His Area” that appeared in the Ghanaweb.com edition of March 24, 2025. In the afore-referenced news story, the Principal Chieftain of the Okuapeman Traditional Area, headquartered in Akuapem-Akropong, the same old erstwhile Okyeman military garrison and, subsequently, major Christian missionary township in Ghana where Yours Truly attended the famous Akropong-SALEM or Basel Missionary Middle Boys’ Boarding School during the first-half of the 1970s, rather mischievously and some would even say, much too expediently, if not plain opportunistically, attempts to make a cheap and tawdry political propaganda theater or crude cantata suite out of what Nana Kwasi Akuffo claims to have been a “secret” license for illegal-mining prospecting in the Okuapeman townships of Mangoase and Kukua.

Now, I used to know this vicinity of Okuapeman very well but, somehow, cannot presently recall their exact locations in mind even as I prepare this piece for publication. And strangely enough, neither do I feel the usual avid urge or desire to consult with my most mnemonically reliable and beloved grandfather Sintim-Google. Or maybe Google is even a grandmother after all, let’s say Yeboaakuaa Google - for don’t we all say, from time to time, that we are going to consult with Abrewa Tia, the short and petite and famously sagacious old woman near the Market Square, whenever it becomes necessary to hold a brief caucus about any controversial or mind-boggling matter?

Anyway, from the aforementioned news story, that is, the details of it, we learn that Nana Kwasi Akuffo and some of his chiefly colleagues and associates recently met with President John “Pope Clearing Agent” Dramani Mahama-appointed Eastern Regional Minister, Ms. Rita Akosua Adjei Awatey, during which confabulation our discursive protagonist bitterly complained to the Chief Representative of the Galamsey-promoting Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) that he could forensically unarguably prove that the previous Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was in the criminally unconscionable business of promoting Galamsey over and above the heads of influential and prominent invested traditional rulers like himself, who are now being gratuitously accused of patronizing and profiteering from the environmentally predatory and deleterious activities of the illegal small-scale mining industry which, by the way, an epically and an “emphatically” defeated then-Candidate Mahama recklessly promoted in the wake of the December 2016 General Election.

There is an overabundance of both audiotape and videotape evidence proving that when it comes to the treasonous promotion of Galamsey in Ghana’s Fourth Republic, the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, has absolutely “No Classmates” among the entire panoply of postcolonial Ghanaian leaders, including the man who introduced the Chinese-made Changfang Excavators that have almost completely destroyed Ghana’s pristine water bodies and forestry resources into the country in 1997 or thereabouts. That the putative architect of the hi-tech Galamsey industry, namely, the late former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings, is also the universally acclaimed Founding-Father of the presently ruling National Democratic Congress, makes matters all the more scandalously bizarre.

The preceding reality and his apparently abject lack of the requisite knowledge about the same, actually makes Oseadeεyכ Kwasi Akuffo appear to be all the more morally vacuous in ways that he probably never fathomed prior to making himself such an inexcusable laughing stock of himself before the newly Mahama-appointed Eastern Regional Minister. We need to also underscore, if only for a good measure, that The Okuapemanhene is also a blood relative of former President Akufo-Addo, and that it is also in the municipal township of Akuapem-Akropong where the mortal remains of the late Chief Justice Edward Akufo-Addo, father of Nana Akufo-Addo, are interred, almost at a stone’s throw from the Okuapeman Palace, at least that was what the place was called while I was at Akropong-SALEM.

Nana Kwasi Akuffo also claims to have written to complain to the then Akufo-Addo-appointed Minister of Lands and Natural Resources and received not even the minimum level of courtesy by way of an acknowledgment of the receipt of his plaint, much less a response or a query about the predatory activities of the Galamsey in his territory. We are, however, curiously not informed about the reason why Nana Kwasi Akuffo had not decided to promptly take the matter up with the Akufo-Addo Presidency. Which leaves one wondering whether, in fact, his plaint or beef, as New Yorkers are wont to say, was likely more about not having been brought in on the deal and being cut a palm-greasing share of the same.

Now, the very idea of Mr. Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah’s cancellation of all small-scale mining licenses issued by a defeated New Patriotic Party government in the wake of the December 7, 2024 General Election sounds insultingly absurd, if also because Mr. Buah does not tell us, members of the general public, at least not according to the afore-referenced news story being used for this discussion, anything worthwhile or meaningful about the equally environmentally genocidal small-scale mining licenses that were issued by the previous Akufo-Addo regime well before the December 7, 2024 General Election.

Even more significantly, environmentally concerned Ghanaian citizens are also not told as to whether the Mahama 2.0 government intends to put a moratorium or a total freeze on Galamsey activities in the country. Now, who do the globally infamous robber-barons of the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia Mafia Gang suppose themselves to be fooling? Let’s wait and see, Dear Reader.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
March 24, 2025
E-mail: [email protected]