Akufo-Addo’s Superior Policy Philosophy and Agenda on Small-Scale Mining

Nine-hundred hitherto illegal water- and forestry-resource destroying small-scale miners have, to-date, been granted mining licenses and concessions to start mining legally from Monday, December 17, 2018, we have just learned, under a strict environmentally greening regulatory regime in various parts of the country. This is progressively unprecedented and in synch with what prevails in most environmentally protective nations across the globe. Indeed, even as I write, some 3,000 former illegal miners, formerly called “Galamsayers,” have just finished undergoing environmentally protective training at the University of Mines and Technology (UMaT), at Tarkwa, in the Western Region, and shall soon also be granted licenses and concessions to mine in an environmentally acceptable mode throughout the country (See “3,000 Galamseyers Trained at UMaT to Operate Legally” Modernghana.com 12/16/18).

Now, what is significant to observe here is the fact that this “greening” of small-scale mining culture is vastly different from the environmentally destructive old regime or method of illegal small-scale mining that has been cynically and irresponsibly endorsed by former President John Dramani Mahama on grounds that the Central Government, of which he has played a major role, has been unable to create livable-wage jobs for the teeming population of young men and women across the country. The fact of the matter is that unlike his far more mature and visionary successor, to wit, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, it is scandalously and disturbingly clear that other than his megalomaniacal urge to grabbing power, at all costs, in order to sate his ego, Mr. Mahama has absolutely no progressive, constructive or visionary agenda for the development of our country. We also know that he had intended to use the prohibition of the Galamsey industry as a major electioneering plank of his campaign platform in the leadup to the 2020 Presidential Election.

Now, the former Rawlings’ Communications Minister is increasingly becoming desperate and finding it extremely difficult to justify his inordinate hunger for the renewal of his voter-proscribed mandate in order to reassume the presidency. Nana Akufo-Addo also steadily continues to convince Ghanaian voters beyond the proverbial shadow of a doubt that they wasted a protracted four-and-half years of their lives in the political wilderness, when they, in retrospect, inadvisably decided to cede their electoral mandate to the politically divisive ethnic chauvinist who once ungratefully and wickedly described his then recently deceased magnanimous benefactor and boss, namely, President John Evans Atta-Mills, as an arrogant leader who had insolently made his political and ideological right-hand man a “political spare tire.”

The fact of the matter is that, contrary to what his fanatical partisans would have the rest of us believe, Mr. Mahama had long exhausted himself of any practical leadership utility before he was resoundingly and deservedly and massively voted out of power in the 2016 Presidential Election. He may still be youthful and energetic in the rabid estimation of his diehard supporters and sympathizers, but in terms of practical political relevance, the Moscow-trained and much-touted communications wonk has absolutely nothing worthwhile to contribute to the socioeconomic and cultural uplift of the average Ghanaian citizen. You see, left to the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Northern Region, only his brazen and impudent tax-dodging younger brother, Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, would be licensed and authorized to mine the country’s mineral resources, to the detriment of our waterbodies and forestry and other precious environmental resources.

You see, the Bole-born Mahama clansmen and women only care about their own familial welfare and creature comforts, to the hermetic exclusion of the rest of us wretched citizens of our “Ghanaian Earth,” my profound apologies to the late Dr. Frantz Fanon, of Martinique and Algeria; which was why he once stood before The Okyenhene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin, II, and gleefully and sneeringly called Kyebi, the Okyeman traditional and royal capital, “The Galamsey Capital of Ghana.” In short, the man Mr. Mahama woefully lacks any remarkable moral heft and common sense to take our country to the commanding heights of either continental African or global leadership.

Fortunately, now Ghanaians have a far better alternative and a leader who rightly answers to such designation and is also not afraid to take bold and visionary initiatives, both for the short- and long-term development of our country. And that quintessential or model leader is none other than Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. Of course, we need to also heartily commend Dr. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, the globally renowned heart surgeon and Minister of the Environment, Science and Technology, for so progressively and constructively leading in the landmark effort to regreen our national landscape and human and forestry resources, in his capacity as the indefatigable Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM).

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
December 16, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]