NDC Never Promised Galamsey Fight, Period!

While, indeed, it is an open secret that the twice nonconsecutively elected leader of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), who also doubles as the substantive and the bona fide President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, to wit, Mr. John “Ouagadougou-Nkonfem Flying” Dramani Mahama, has bever hidden the blood-dripping fact of his abject contempt for those who have been calling for the express prohibition of illegal small-scale mining, globally known as Galamsey, by flatly refusing to declare a State-of-Emergency to back up his largely lukewarm stance and attitude towards the predatory and the genocidal activities of Galamsey, in all likelihood, contrary to what Ghana’s Parliamentary Majority Leader, Mr. Mahama Ayariga, would have the rest of his countrymen and women and, indeed, the entire global community believe, there very well exists a humongous raft of readily accessible audio and videotapes somewhere in the digital world or the cyberspace archives in which the most mendacious Fourth Republican Ghanaian leader and president can be heard and seen on the electioneering-campaign trail, unctuously and pontifically promising Ghanaian votes his uncompromising stance and intent on radically extirpating the existential menace of Galamsey, by promptly declaring a State-of-Emergency on Galamsey on his very first day in office (See “NDC never promised state of emergency to fight galamsey — Majority Leader” Modernghana.com 11/20/25).

Which is why it comes as absolutely and downright absurd and irrepressibly comical, to speak much less about plain ludicrous, for Mr. Ayariga, who also doubles as the ruling National Democratic Congress-sponsored Member of Parliament for Bawku-Central Constituency, in the Upper-East Region, to be imperiously and inexcusably insolently calling on his fellow legislator, namely, Mr. Patrick Yaw Boamah, the country’s main opposition New Patriotic Party’s sponsored Member of Parliament for Okaikwei-Central Constituency, in Greater-Accra Region, in Ghana’s capital city, to immediately retract and promptly apologize for his dead-on-target call-out of President Mahama for having treacherously hoodwinked Ghanaian voters with the promise of the declaration of a State-of-Emergency on his first day in office as his surefire bet in the epic battle against the veritable existential and the genocidal threat of Galamsey, in the event of the ballot-snatching and cannibalizing Candidate-General Dramani Mahama’s being offered the popular mandate to govern the country, once again, in the runup to the December 7, 2024 General Election.

You see, what Mr. Mahama Ayariga’s vainglorious call for Mr. Boamah to promptly retract and issue and unqualified apology for what the plaintiff shamelessly and unconscionably regards as his political and ideological adversary’s brazen and abrasive take-down of the President simply means is that, in the New Patriotic Party copycat “Manifesto Playbook” of the leadership of the populist and the pathologically kleptocratic National Democratic Congress, there exists absolutely nothing akin to any national development policy agenda that envisages the wantonly destructive activities of Galamsey as a major problem verging on a crisis situation deserving of serious national attention, discussion and immediate resolution.

Which, of course, is not the least bit altogether surprising, in view of the fact of what Ghanaians already know about how dangerously close to electoral a blistering defeat a then incumbent President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo came in the 2020 Presidential Election; significantly but not altogether completely because of the resonant success of a politically desperate Candidate-General Dramani Mahama in making hay and prime grist out of the Galamsey Menace, which the West-Gonja native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, boldly and brazenly defended as the sole most viable alternative to the insufferably high rate of unemployment in the country. In recent months, President Mahama has also made it a watchword of reminding party stalwarts and supporters and sympathizers that the foremost agenda of the National Democratic Congress is the steely determination of winning the next election by every means necessary.

Well, as of this writing and press preparation, it is worthy of note and mnemonic jogging, as well, that nearly exactly a year after Candidate-General Dramani Mahama and his ballot-snatching and pulverising cohorts of outlaws and scofflaws and plain thugs swept themselves back to power, and his cheap and tawdry talk of implementing what the widely alleged third-class Legon graduate of History and Mass Communications had incoherently promoted as his 24-Hour Economy National Labor Development Policy Initiative, Galamsey remains the foremost going concern in the country.

Now, of course, what the foregoing means is that under various shades of strategically devious and environmentally destructive labels such as the GhanaGoldBod and the Mineral Income Investment Fund (MIIF), which kleptocratic taxpayer-milking gravy trains are both operated as effective party monopolies operated by the sons and daughters and surrogates of the leadership of the Johnson “The Bui Dam Woyome” Asiedu-Nketia-pimped National Democratic Congress.

Indeed, so unspeakably dire have the predatory and the deleterious environmental activities of the Galamsey industry become that even some otherwise respectable and politically reticent religious leaders and institutional establishments in the country, foremost among them the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), have issued a passionate call for the Mahama 2.0 regime to immediately declare a State-of-Emergency and National Disaster on what has become comically designated as the country’s largest 24-Hour Economy Job-Creation Program under the politically retooled “born again” ragtag government of the infamous former late President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-appointed former “Shit-Bombing” Communications Minister.

And guess what, Dear Reader? It is absolutely not altogether a happenstance that almost exactly a decade ago, when the first Mahama regime was jackbooted out of Ghana’s Presidential Palace, Jubilee House, it was a young Harvard University Graduate Law School alumnus by the name of Mahama Ayariga who was the Dramani Mahama-appointed Minister for the Environment, Science and Technology. Now, tell me, what has really changed since then, judging by the blotchy track record of the Barewa College, Zaria, Nigeria, alumnus in the national environmental protection and safety sector, besides more “Shit-Bombing” ad-nauseam? Reader, your guess is as good and valid as mine.

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