'Galamseyer' bemoans government’s drastic measures

The government of His Excellency the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has declared with resolute determination to exterminate the ongoing ruinous surface mining, otherwise called in the local parlance as galamsey, from Ghana. The President has detailed the military to the fields and instructed them to stop all galamsey activities as they may come across or discover wherever they happen to be and by any meaningful means they deem possible and applicable.

This is a President who is farsighted and means business in the best interest of Ghanaians. It is all too obvious the devastation being wreaked on our water bodies, forests and arable lands by the greedy and short-sighted illegal surface miners. For the sake of both the present generation and posterity, the President has put his head/neck on the block. He says he will be much happier to win the war against galamsey and lose his second term in office as President of Ghana should that be the case than to win a second term amid aggravated continuation of devastating galamsey activities in Ghana.

To put one’s head/neck on the block means to risk doing something which will make other people lose their good opinion of you if it fails.

Before the advent of Nana Akufo Addo and his NPP to power, it was a well-documented fact established beyond doubt that irresponsible galamsey activities masterminded and orchestrated by foreigners e.g. the illegal Chinese nationals in Ghana and some Ghanaian natives, supported by then myopic and corrupt NDC administration for dubious reasons, were damaging the ecology.

How could a sensible President close his eyes to the conspicuously irreparable damages being caused to our water bodies, farmlands and forests without taking any positive action to rectify the anomaly? It is for this necessity of preventing the nation’s water bodies, farmlands and forests from further devastation that the President has taken all the needed steps and measures to solve the annoying problem once and for all.

I do not rejoice in the misfortune of fellow Ghanaians for whatever reason; however, I also do not condone their obstinacy and oftentimes stupid bravado to do what they want as they want regardless of the laws in place preventing them from taking such contrary actions in disrespect of the laws.

The person in the attached video that has gone viral on social media seems to have disrespected the President and his government and to a larger extent, the entire Ghanaian population. Despite the official ban on galamsey, he was still into the activity according to circumstantial evidence (evidence that tends to prove a fact by proving other events or circumstances which afford a basis for a reasonable inference of the occurrence of the fact at issue) and for reasons best known to him only.

What were his caterpillar and digger trucks doing on the farmland as found in the video? Were they not preparing the ground for galamsey work? Should the fact that he sacrificed a lot to help bring Nana Akufo Addo and NPP to power be enough credible excuse to allow him to flout the President’s policy on fighting galamsey?

There are three essential things that sustain human life and existence on earth without which no life can continue to exist on this planetary earth. They are:

a. Air (oxygen)

b. Water

c. Food

Without air to breathe, one will die within a matter of minutes. Without water to drink, just give yourself a month or two and you will be dead. Without food to eat, you will have joined the dead ancestors after say, three months if there is anyone that can survive for that long without eating at all.



Galamsey as it is has been spoiling our water bodies making them poisonous to drink. The mercury used to get them the gold in addition to the amount of sand washed into the rivers, do damage the waters. All the big rivers (Bia, Tano, Nini, Ankobra, Pra, Offin, Birim, Anum, Ayensu, and Densu) in Ghana and most of the smaller ones have nearly been destroyed by these ruthless galamsayers. Should we allow these selfish individuals to continue to cause the premature extinction of Ghanaians from the earth because of their insatiable greed for riches?

Ghanaians do not know how essential potable water, thus clean river water, is, until they have been left in the middle of the Sahara, Kalahari or Kobe desert.

Dear reader, do you support the guy in the video continuing to do his galamsey to spoil our rivers and lands to cost us clean water and source of food production or you support the President’s laudable initiative to safeguard our sources of human existence as spelt out above? Be the judge unto yourself on this issue/question.

Yes, some people are said to be advising the guy in the video to sue the government. Let him go ahead. He will fail because he will not be able to offer any sensible explanation for the digger and caterpillar being where they were found and torched.

Yes, it is good to burn them rather than to confiscate them for future use by the government. If they had been impounded and moved to any of the big cities, will the culprit now claiming to be victim not go and bribe some government officials to release them to him? If the heavy-duty trucks were released to him, would he not go back to continue with his abhorrent galamsey activities? However, now that they have been destroyed, it will kill his hopes of ever going to rent such heavy and expensive trucks for the purposes of enriching himself by disrespecting the government’s orders because he belongs to the ruling party.

In Nigeria in the 1980s, they chose days for public viewing when all seized contraband goods were set on fire. Such goods comprised imported lace materials, certain types of cars, etc.

Much as I feel sorry for the guy, he has paid a well-deserving price for audaciously disobeying the President’s orders to cease all galamsey activities in Ghana. It serves him right, pity though.

By: Rockson Adofo