The cane that was used to lash Takyi will inevitably be used on Baah, so say the Akan of Ghana. President Mahama knows this proverb very well; he used it in one of his addresses earlier in the year.
In the 2016 elections, the difference between Akufo-Addo and his closest contender was 1,984,630 votes. Then his reign began. Such goodwill by the people! Even the traders at Aborsey Okai voluntarily reduced prices.
Then started the little-little slips. At the end of his first term, Ghanaians voted to tell him that they were not terribly impressed with his performance.
When the votes were tallied in the 2020 election, the gap between Akufo-Addo and the first runner-up had narrowed to only 517,405 votes – one million people had decided to vote against him.
Other “sins” followed, which Ghanaians could not forgive, and in the 2024 elections, Akufo-Addo was trailing by a whopping 1,714,089 votes.
One of his unforgivable sins was the fight against galamsey.
Then came Mahama. Between January 2025, when he assumed the reins of government, and August 2025, he was on cloud nine.
The economy was working perfectly: the cedi’s performance against the dollar, rising from GH¢17.4 to GH¢10.4, was magical; fuel prices dropped to as low as GH¢12; GDP rose from US$75bilion to over US$130 billion, and inflation was down from 23% to 13%; Ghana’s debt burden reduced by GH¢150 billion; emission tax and E-levy were gone.
Ghanaians applauded.
But, come mid-August, and since then, the cedi’s strength has weakened, affecting fuel prices. The OMCs are putting it down to the exchange rate.
Nonetheless, because of visionary projects like Big Push, Goldbod and all of the above indicators, Mahama’s goodwill is still intact, to a large extent. Ghanaians seem to simply love Mahama’s personality and are willing to give him a chance to prove that the downward slide is temporary.
Nine months after he swept to power, however, the people are beginning to taste a “small” sourness in their mouths. All because of Galamsey and the President’s answer to the media’s question to him about the declaration of a State of Emergency.
As a government in Ghana, when you have the Catholic Bishops Conference, the Christian Council, CDD, medical professionals and other civil society groups ganging up against a major policy, the warning to any President is: “Beware!” Our ancestors said that one small load on top of another small load soon becomes an unbearable burden.
Galamsey is one load too heavy to bear.
Our water bodies have been poisoned by mining pollutants such as cyanide and mercury. Babies are being born deformed. Water shortages have become so severe that women and schoolchildren are walking five kilometres in search of water at prices that are best left to the imagination.
The last straw is the shutdown of the Kwanyako headworks of GWCL. Heavy siltation of the Ayensu River has caused this tragedy. As of Tuesday, 11 districts in the region do not have water. It’s Galamsey.
Soundbites from towns and villages in Central and Western Regions are harrowing, bordering on the apocalyptic.
Rather than act and act decisively, Ghanaians are doing what we are best known for: talking. The talkers are making excuses for the murderers, while the arguments are along party lines.
The havoc which illegal artisanal mining is wreaking has not been for lack of warnings. Dr Joseph Ampofo, former Director of the Water Research Institute of the CSIR, and Professor Rosemary Mamaa Entsua Mensah, a fishery scientist and aquatic ecologist, are “Galamsey prophets”.
Many, many years ago, long before galamsey assumed the proportions of an existential threat, Professor Entsua Mensah had foreseen, researched into and forewarned that life in Ghana could come to a stop if nothing was done to stop the threat that mining, in general, and galamsey, in particular, posed to our water bodies.
As far back as 2015, Dr Ampofo granted me an interview in which he warned: “A time is coming – and it looks like sooner than we had anticipated – when Ghanaians shall see water but we cannot use it. It is so serious that the water cannot even be used to water seedlings in nurseries!
That is why President Mahama cannot continue to dilly-dally about the call for a declaration of a State of Emergency.
The galamseyers are armed to the teeth, meaning they have declared war. They shoot to kill. To poison a people’s water source amounts to a declaration of war. They are committing mass murder.
Every government in Ghana in the Fourth Republic has declared “war on Galamsey”, but I beg to submit that wars are not fought with resolutions, arrests and threats.
Wars can only be fought with bullets that kill, and the only condition under which shoot-to-kill is permissible is in a state of emergency imposed on guilty communities.
Over to you, President Mahama. Ghanaians did it to Takyi (Akufo-Addo). They will do it to the NDC if….
Source: Enimil Ashon
