Open letter to President Akufo-Addo on your 'online Presidency' comment

Dear Mr. President,

Like many other Ghanaians, I asked a clarifying question about what you really meant by putting your Presidency on the line in the matter of the galamsey menace at the onset of your tenure (see my previous publication on Modernghana.com, October 10, 2024).

In your latest campaign tour to the North to campaign for your Party’s Flagbearer, Dr. Bawumia, you clarified your infamous statement on the galamsey menace. Respectfully, Mr. President, to suggest that your Presidency was put on the line because you were ready to face the political cost of fighting it is indeed disappointing and even more heartbreaking.

Mr. President, to put your reputation or something (i.e., Presidency) on the line REALLY means that you needed to have vacated your Presidency if the galamsey fight was not won or contained, not just losing a few votes which might be attributable to your unpopular policies and leadership style but not necessarily your ‘online Presidency’ comment.

The reality is that you have succeeded in graduating the ‘traditional galamsey’ from years back into what I call ‘high-tech galamsey’ (HTG) under your watchful eyes, even when you openly put your Presidency on the line. Mr. President, your actions have indeed exposed the very words you expressed to fight the worsening galamsey phenomenon.

It appears to me and many others that you never meant to truthfully fight this raging galamsey, which is an existential threat to our country. Your ‘online Presidency’ comment and the worsened HTG menace clearly suggest that you cajoled Ghanaians to vote for you in your second term without any genuine intention to fight environmental cancer.

For instance, your former Minister, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, at the Ministry of Environment, Science & Technology, revealed Presidential complicity in the fight against galamsey. According to Prof. Frimpong-Boateng, there were ‘Presidential Galamseyers’ who were neck-deep in the galamsey practice, and you were informed about them, but you chose to look away until Journalist Kevin Taylor exposed it. Other scandals involving Mr. Charles Bissiw and others under the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Galamsey pointed to a losing battle against the galamsey menace you claimed to have put on the line.

Mr. President, are you not worried that almost all our major river bodies, e.g., 16 of them, are now turned into ‘milky rivers’ and many forest reserves devastated in the name of gold mining under your watch? Your obvious lack of political will to deal with the galamsey menace is now betrayed by your foot-dragging and half-hearted actions taken to assuage the angry divided Organized Labor front. As we speak, the Galamseyers are back to the Birim River, which has been heavily polluted despite your half-hearted commitment to the fight.

It is apparent that you have thrown your hands in the air and are looking helpless while our forest reserves and water bodies are destroyed and polluted. Frankly, putting your Presidency on the line carries no meaning now. Among the incompetent management of the economy, unhinged borrowing, moral decadence, joblessness, and thriving corruption scandals leading to a lot of hardships and hopelessness under your watch, the worsening galamsey menace is the cardinal ‘sin’ of your regime in my candid view.

Not only is the present generation threatened with these enormous social, economic, and ecological consequences, but future generations are also negatively affected after you are dead and gone. With just less than two months to go for your Presidency, it appears to me you have completely checked out on the galamsey fight while waiting for the inauguration of your successor on January 7, 2025.

Sadly, Mr. President, your Presidency has failed us badly, and posterity will not remember you fondly.

Sincerely yours,

A Citizen, but not a Spectator