By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
The attempted fatal stoning of the paramount king of the Nkoranza Traditional State, Okatakyie Agyeman-Kudom IV, ought to serve as a wake-up call to the National House of Chiefs that far gone are the days when the personal greed of our local leaders and elders, callously collaborating with our largely insensitive and alienated politicians and foreign corporate interests, cavalierly dictated the pace and direction of our collective national destiny (See “Nkoranzahene Stoned” Daily Guide 9/19/11).
In the case of the people of the Nkoranza district, as one may also aptly suppose to be the case of inhabitants of other gold-bearing areas of the country, the local rulers and government operatives appear to have cut a deal behind closed doors, after which they cynically approached their constituents under the guise of a so-called sensitization exercise, which amounted to nothing more than insolently having the people rubberstamp a blistering process of economic strangulation.
Needless to say, the recent discovery of massive reserves of petroleum and the already well-established cocoa industry ought to be adequate for the sustainable development of the country. And as wisely and poignantly indicated by the righteously indignant residents of the Nkoranza district, what needs to be the overriding focus of the traditional rulers and elders of this breadbasket-zone of Ghana is the massive production and effective silage – or year-round storage – of such staple dietary products as maize (corn), cassava, rice, yam, cocoyam, cashews and plantains. It is the adequate and sustainable production of the latter that is likely to guarantee the survival and prosperity of Ghanaian citizens, both present and posterity, and not the wanton denudation of our forestry and other natural resources that is wont to seriously endanger our very existence and survival as a significant part of the species of global humanity.
In registering their righteous indignation, the people of Nkoranza and its environs also highlighted the edifying fact of their acute awareness of the destructive impact of surface mining on the livelihood of their clansmen and women and fellow citizens in places like the Birem district of Akyem-Abuakwa, Obuasi in the Adansi district of the Asante Region, Ntotroso and Kenyase in the Brong-Ahafo Region; and Prestea in the Western Region.
What makes the popular protest of the people of Nkoranza supremely worthy of national support is the fact that, so far, the Mills-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has yet to present Parliament and Ghanaians at large with any comprehensive and/or constructive agenda regarding the use to which our new-found oil revenue will be put. Instead, we find the government out on a blind and reckless loan-solicitation spree with projected revenue from our oil industry being carelessly advanced as collateral.
What is even more perplexing is the fact that both the government and parliament have yet to present the people with any credible mechanism, or formula, vis-à-vis the appropriation of our oil revenue; and also what visible measures have been put in place to guarantee the non-diversionary use of such revenue.
In the interim, our solemn advice to both the executive and legislative branches of government is to put an immediate halt to the proposed mining activities in the Nkoranza district, as well as all other districts in the country faced with a similar threat, until it can be credibly demonstrated that vital agricultural activities in the districts will not be adversely affected by the irreversibly extractive and pollution-generating ventures of multinational conglomerates like Newmont.
*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.
###
