By Emmanuel Owusu AGYEI
Last weekend, when I was driving Emma Smith, a friend, to the Mississippi River park and, like we always do, we admired the serene landscape, the fresh and clean water of the river, as we started our walk, a stark contrast gripped my thoughts, the image of our own River Pra, choked and discolored by galamsey.
The conversation turned to home, and I found myself expressing some disappointment about the profound income inequality that is not just dividing us but actively emptying us of our future.
The equation is brutally simple. When a nation allows a vast chasm to grow between the privileged few and the struggling many, it sends a clear message to its ambitious youth.
It says: “Your hard work, your education, and your talent are not enough to guarantee a life of dignity and prosperity here.” We have created a system where the rewards for success are so concentrated that the ladder to a better life feels impossibly steep for the average graduate, nurse, engineer, or teacher.
And that is not even my problem today. Maybe someday I will come back to it. I have tried to wrap my head around it. I have tried to follow the logic, to understand the politics, to see the hidden hand. But the simple, maddening fact remains: we, as a nation, appear incapable of stopping a handful of people from poisoning our rivers, tearing down our forests, and mortgaging our children’s future for raw gold.
It defies all reason. This is not a complex geopolitical crisis. It is not a mysterious, incurable disease. It is a crime. It is an act of destruction happening in broad daylight. We have the laws, we have the security forces, and we have the public outrage. Yet, the excavators keep roaring at night, the cyanide keeps flowing, and the rivers, the lifeblood of millions, run thick with mud and despair.
So, one is forced to ask the unthinkable: Are we simply not trying? Or worse, are we waiting? Waiting for the problem to become so catastrophic, so financially ruinous? But it is beginning to take root: Maybe we are waiting for the IMF or the World Bank to solve it for us.
Maybe I may believe what Emma says that we seem to lack the political will to take the painful, necessary steps. To dismantle the powerful networks we all know exist. To arrest the “big men” in air-conditioned offices who own the machines, not just the poor boy wielding the shovel. To tell our own party financiers and traditional leaders that the party is over. The domestic cost of this fight is apparently too high.
But come to think of this, what if the cost of not fighting it was imposed from outside? What if the destruction of our water bodies and farmland becomes so severe that it threatens the entire macroeconomic stability the IMF is so concerned with? Then, perhaps, it becomes a conditionality. A line item in a loan agreement.
Loan Disbursement, Tranche 2: Subject to satisfactory implementation of the Forestry Protection and River De-siltation Action Plan, as verified by an independent, international auditor.”*
Is this what we have been reduced to? That we will only save our own land when a foreign institution in Washington D.C. tells us we must, to access a billion dollars. That we will finally enforce our own laws not for the sake of our people, but for the sake of our credit rating. To me, the fight against galamsey is not a fight against poverty. It is a fight against greed. It is a fight against a cabal that has decided that their personal gain is more important than our national survival.
And so far, they are winning. So, if we are not waiting for a handbook, and if we possess the will to reclaim our sovereignty, what must be done? The solutions are not secret; they require only the courage to implement them without fear or favour. The fight against galamsey must be elevated to a national security priority, insulated from the interest of partisan politics.
We are not a nation lacking in intellect or legislation. We have a mountain of research from our top minds detailing the catastrophic impact of galamsey. We have a bookshelf full of laws and regulations that, if implemented, would bring this destructive practice to a halt.
We have launched military operations, formed presidential task forces, and declared countless “wars” on illegal mining, yet we are not seeing any results. We have the laws. We have the research. We have the traditional structures, we have His Royal Majesty Otumfour Osei Tutu, What we lack is the unified, fearless will to use them. The question is no longer what to do, but who we are as a people.
>>>the writer lives at Bartlett, Tennessee, United States
