Have we given up on Galamsey? Oh! Yes we have. There is no official announcement; but watch our body language.
Green lights for Gala currently blinking across the landscape. Taken over farms, rivers, bridges, zebra crossings, basement of houses; school sites, highways.
The most daring are security sites: a police station, and this last straw: a military barracks. Very soon it will inch towards state monuments.
Oh, it has already! Check Kwame Nkrumah’s resting place at Nkroful! All this as we stand and stare. The quiet message must be clear: ‘Touch not my anointed.’
Ghana. Where are the elders? Is anybody home? Onukpa bɛɛ Shia lo? (Please help my Ga, Cliff Tagoe)
A recent Joy News documentary draws tears from the eye. ‘Mining illegally is now legal in parts of the Western region;’ says Erastus Donkor the correspondent.
‘Galamsey unhinged, open, glaring, bold…under electric poles, legal in places.’ Mpohor, Adum, etc. Miners pay weekly dues to security personnel and chiefs, river guards, police, soldiers. “They all come for chop money, some come with their own price tag for haggling.’ Guards, security, chiefs all complicit.
And who are the terrorists? Check this headline about the Ahafo region: ‘Chiefs sack MP and DCE from Palace over Galamsey.’ Then this one from the Western region: ‘Community members in Jomoro have chased out MCE and local NDC executives after catching them for Galamsey.’
And hear this voice in the background booing the Government officials: ‘Shame, you are embarrassing the Govt.”
Agoo Ghana, Onukpa bɛɛ Shia loo? No elders home? Our Council of State?
Has the state given up on citizens? The mobilization of forces for a fight, plans for special courts, chasing of Gala workers could then be for the cameras only. In truth, our men might be simply chasing rats and grasscutters for dinner. As for one or two big men currently in police grips and cells, take that for headlines only. All these years that boys have been grabbed in Galamsey pits, can we produce a record of ‘bad boys still in jail,’ ‘those broken jail,’ ‘number remanded, prosecuted,’ and number pardoned under the strange Latin expression ‘nolle prosequi.’ Can we see statistics of jailed ‘galam-sayers,’ ‘galam-doers’ and ‘Galam-freed?’
And by the way the several ‘Galam-Chinese’; how many have we seen desilting gutters under the overhead at Adjiriganor, or Chorkor?
Happily the state has taken the trouble to admit that ‘Our own people are involved.’ Eiii, asem aba! Sani eba. That was several weeks ago, and we are still Galam-staring? Galam-Pampering, rewarding them? Feeding them? Elsewhere the big man who made that confession, and still stares at the suspects, would have submitted his goodbye: signed sealed delivered. ‘I have disappointed you all: bye bye.’ Not in Ogyakrom.
Indeed we are playing games with nature.
But all appears to be well. We simply look away, celebrating the joy of blood money, sacrificing human life with poison, kidneys, malformed babies, heritage cocoa farms and food security. All for gold! Being short-sighted we forget that ‘when the last tree dies, we all die.’ The doctor may then come in to announce to the waiting crowd: ‘the surgery was very successful, but the patient has died.’
Having been woefully disappointed by state and agencies, unto whose shoulders does the vulnerable cry? Currently, patriotic youths and women in various towns are fighting Galamsey forces with bare hands, risking their lives. But there is more. Our confidence in local spirits and vindictive deities has been renewed across the nation. Chiefs, youths, women, now tearfully submit petitions to the secretariat of river deities. No need for elite lawyers, charge sheets; adjournments, punitive bail terms; nolle prosequi, nor political judiciaries.
Tell us more:
At Dormaa, aggrieved women protesting a chief’s plans to bring Galamsey, have petitioned vindictive river deities.
Hear one woman: ‘If they forcibly seize our lands for Galamsey, we shall kill them through our river deities.’
And listen to this chief from the Mpohor area, while petitioning a river: ‘May the deities summon the DCE, MP, lineage heads, the security forces if they have accepted bribes.’ ‘Summon’ here simply means ‘invite them by any possible means.’
The entire community of course knows what a spiritual invite entails: the courier service, spiritual ambulance and all.
Other modes of spiritual vengeance have been noted by the people: intermittent cave-in of Galamsey pits killing scores of culprits, as well as the recent flooding of Galamsey sites including Samreboi, notorious for illicit mining: The fury of Mother Earth.
But the biggest retribution so far has been the 2025 air disaster leading to the demise of six government officials. While the state set up committees to investigate the tragedy, credit had already been given by locals to river deities of Sikakrom: Said one woman:
‘It was an act of resistance by our deities. The plane was full of Galamsey executives from Govt; and the river deities at Sikakrom fought back to protect our land. Those people were up there to survey the land, and handover it to the Chinese to poison our rivers; but the gods arrested them.’
Significantly, for all the devastation caused by Galamsey, one small river in Asante has been spared. Have Galamsey adventurists dared to pollute the vindictive Antoa Nyamaa in their greed for Gold?
The State, security, agents and law enforcement have obviously failed Ghana in the Galamsey fight. But there is a higher order of law enforcement. Let modern Ghana waste time and effort on state guards and security. From time immemorial, local belief systems have been the most resilient defense and judiciary network.
Where in doubt, simply petition our ‘Supreme Gods.’ (Higher than the Supreme Court)
Through greed and disrespect for forefathers, we have squandered our heritage.
Tea no wɔ he? Yaanom. Nkokɔ no wɔ he? Yaawe!
