In what would have appeared a notch higher in the fight against illegal mining, subsumed under a more inglorious coinage called galamsey, a menace that has not only become a thorn in the flesh of successive governments, but also a plague to citizens, the past week unfortunately ended with the country having been dealt another huge blow-a catastrophic blow, in the fight against galamsey. In this piece, as with subsequent ones, I will be sharing my thoughts on the fight against galamsey, as part of a series on ‘War on Galamsey—Win Now or Lose Forever!’
The government was yet to launch one of its several campaigns against galamsey –the Responsible Cooperative Mining and Skills Development Programme (rCOMSDEP) was due to be launched in Obuasi in the Ashanti Region. This campaign would have seen a multi-sectoral approach to fighting the menace, ensuring the regulation of the illegal mining sector to mine responsibly.
That Wednesday unfortunately turned out to be the ‘Ides of August’ –a metaphoric reference to ‘The Ides of March’ in Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’, and many a Ghanaian have been grief-stricken by this tragedy. The questions that now linger on the minds of many Ghanaians are: What does this leave us in the fight against galamsey? Will the galamsey fight be forever nipped in the bud so that we forever hold our peace? Or will this be the crucial point for the much-desired win? Or will galamsey become the Achilles’ heel of this government, as it was with the previous?
Flashback
On May 29, 2017, in a similar fate, if Ghanaians would recall, we woke up to the gruesome lynching of Maj. Maxwell Mahama, an officer of the 5th Infantry Battalion of the Ghana Armed Forces, who was on duty at Denkyira Obuasi in the Central Region as part of the anti-galamsey fight. That tragedy has long been forgotten, much more quickly than a pregnant woman would forget the pain of labour. This was when Nana Akufo-Addo’s government had assumed power.
Fast forward to 2025, eight years after that incident, and eight months into John Mahama’s second term, another tragedy has befallen a nation reeling under the shadows of illegal mining, worse than when the tragedy of 2017 befell, and this time, eight precious lives have perished in a horrific manner. Dr. Edward Omane Boamah, Defence Minister, Dr. Alhaji Murtala Mohammed, MP for Tamale Central and Minister for Environment, Science and Technology, Alhaji Muniru Mohammed, Acting Deputy National Security Coordinator, Dr. Samuel Sarpong, Vice Chairman, National Democratic Congress (NDC), Samuel Aboagye, Former Member of Parliament for Obuasi East, Sqn. Leader Peter Bafemi Anala, Flying Officer, Twum Ampofo and Sgt. Ernest Addo Mensah were en route to Obuasi to launch the rCOMSDEP when their lives ended in flames.
If this calamity, the second major in eight years, coupled with several other fruitless attempts at fighting galamsey, including the deaths of galamsey operators themselves, attacks on galamsey media reporters, among others, does not end galamsey, then perhaps, just perhaps, we may be doomed forever to continue to live with it.
While we continue to mourn and decry the painful loss of these devotees to nationalism, may the death of these heroes of change bring change. Long live the memory of the fallen heroes.
R.I.P Galamsey !
