When I heard that President Akufo Addo sacked Prof Frimpong-Boateng from the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology & Innovation (MESTI) and also from the galamsey fight, all I could say was “Thank you Jesus, may your holy name be praised”. This is a big stress relief and victory to all Ghanaian small-scale miners in the country. The Mugabe is gone!!

After conducting some field work on galamsey in 2018 and realized that the Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM) who doubled as the Minister for MESTI was just deceiving the President and Ghanaians about the galamsey fight, I began a crusade on his removal from office. All Ghanaians should visit rivers Ankobrah, Offin, Pra, Birim, Oda, Bonsa, etc, to check if any of these waterbodies has been restored. They are even worse now.

A section of Ghanaians, especially NPP people verbally attacked and bastardized me for no tangible reason. A typical example is when the Assin Central MP, Kennedy Agyapong sat on radio stations in Ghana and UK to painfully insult me and my family. Until over 500 excavators developed wings and flew from Ghana in January 2020, my name was always on the “bashing” list. Unshakably, I was unperturbed with these attacks but continued to fight because I had God on my side, who knew I was on a war to save future generations from importing water to the country. I live in USA with my family but I thought about the people in Ghana who will be affected most in the near future. Let’s all try to be courageous and selfless!!

How could a whole professor deceive the the president and the entire nation with wrongful information on Ankobra River, saying the waterbody had been restored with evidence of fishes living in it? Prez Akufo Addo subsequently channelled this misleading information to the whole world when he was invited to deliver a keynote address during the Mining Indaba Conference in February 2019.

In the midsts of the galamsey ban, foreigners, particularly Chinese nationals were busily operating galamsey, polluting our waterbodies and degrading our lands under military protection when Ghanaians with legitimate small-scale licenses had been instructed to stay home unemployed. Meanwhile, his son JoJo Frimpong-Boateng was busily melting gold in Ghana.

No Chinese galamseyer has been prosecuted and jailed after his/her arrest but some Ghanaians have been sentenced for engaging in the same illegal mining. How can a professor be so wicked to his own people and expect these people to vote for his party? The illegal mining mismanagement has caused the NPP party to lose more than 22 seats to NDC in only mining areas.

Now that that the “Galamsey Mugabe” is gone, let’s hope that his successor will put pragmatic measures in place to ensure that small-scale mining is operated in environmentally-friendly manner to create jobs for the people and protect our water bodies as well as our lands at the same time. A win-win approach to addressing this galamsey menace is what Ghanaians are looking forward to.

Let’s enjoy Methodist Hymnal 671 and praise the Lord.

METHODIST HYMNAL (MHB) 671

Title: Sing Alleluia Forth in Duteous Praise – By Breviary

Stanza 1

SING Alleluia forth in duteous praise,

O citizens of heaven, and sweetly raise

An endless Alleluia!

Stanza 2

The Holy City shall take up your strain,

And with glad songs resounding wake again

An endless Alleluia!

Stanza 3

To Thee, Eternal Son, our voices sing;

With them, O Holy Ghost, to Thee we bring

An endless Alleluia!

 God bless our homeland Ghana

Dr. Solomon Owusu

Denver, Colorado, USA