Cameron Duodu: Everything Scatter!

THE expression that comes to my mind when I look at the Ghanaian political scene, with regard to the disastrous  galamsey issue, is (as the late musician, Fela Anikpulako Kuti would say) “everything scatter!”

The office of His Excellency the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo,  has taken two years to comment on a Report requested from a Minister whom the President had once put in charge of a problem that the President had acknowledged was capable of losing him his presidency.

Two years, and what was the comment? That the Minister’s Report was full of “hearsay”!

Was he asked to substantiate the statements he had constructed from “hearsay”?

Were the allegations contained therein independently investigated? Can’t “hearsay” be transformed into fact if it is corroborated by more than one person who is considered to be “credible”?

Regarding Professor Frimpong-Boateng himself, why did he keep silent for two years and watch the struggle against galamsey going downhill, when he knew he had given the President a Report that might arrest the destruction that he knew galamsey was doing to the water-bodies of this country?

Obviously, he has demonstrated that he knows how not to  let his voice be lost on an issue of importance —  to himself!. Why didn’t he make his voice heard on behalf of his beloved country, Ghana?

Others involved in the drama are also now making themselves heard.  The public never knew that some of them were involved in the galamsey issue at all.

Gabby Otchere-Darko, for instance. Not many of us knew that  a mining company was one of his clients as a lawyer. He says now that he spoke to Prof Frimpong-Boateng once as a lawyer making enquiries about matters concerning his client’s business. Is he seriously suggesting that anyone conversant with the power structure in Ghana in 2021 would only have left his intervention at the level of a lawyer and his client?

Is he not aware that people regard him – rightly or wrongly — as a member of the President’s “kitchen Cabinet”? Would he be surprised to learn that people who are au fait with political realities in the world often attribute more political clout to members of “Kitchen Cabinets” than to members of formal Cabinets? If he knew that, what was the point of his touting his lawyer-client relationship with the company on whose behalf he phoned the Minister?

Certainly, we have taken the make-believe aspects of our political system too far. If it was just a matter of party politics, we shouldn’t be too worried about it. Ghana is not the only country in which the political party system has made everything go “scatter.”

No, in our case, it is our water, our forests and our farms that we are toying with. We just cannot leave matters as they are.

We cannot leave persons who are supposed to care about the President and the history he leaves behind, people who should protect his back by acting ethically and with wisdom, strictly alone, when they fail in their duty to him.

At the very least, they should realise that Ghanaians have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Ghanaians can see that rivers like the one that runs in the President’s own hometown, Kyebi,  have tuned into what someone from the area described as “mpampa” [thick, coloured porridge] or even worse, “mmonkyi mmonka” [gutters and gullies filled with smelly stagnant water].

How anyone who has ever drunk pure river water from Birem, Ankobrah, Tanoh, Offin, Oti etc. can contemplate creating conditions, or colluding in the creation of conditions, in which his own people are reduced to drinking such polluted water — in peaceful times (unlike in ancient eras when warfare could drive them from their birth-place) is a mystery to me.

That some of these people who finance the purchase of excavators and changfangs to cause the pollution of the water-bodies, knowing fully well that their children and grand-children SHALL INEVITABLY suffer the consequences of such ruthless recklessness  in future,  makes me contemplate resigning from the human race.

I believe that a report will soon be published, detailing the nature of illnesses and congenital biological mutations that the MERCURY AND CYANIDE used in washing gold in water-bodies can cause to unborn babies in the womb. Everyone should read the report avidly when it comes out. It is belated, of course, (this being “ammodin” Ghana [a country where unpleasant issues are normally swept under the carpet!] but its better late (as now) than never.

I want all those who by inaction, sabotage, undermining and back-biting have contributed to making the struggle against galamsey unsuccessful; to take note that HISTORY will be their judge. They go about dressed like people who have been taught civilization. They attend church services and make donations to good causes. But their brains are as dead as dead wood, and can’t comprehend that you don’t come into the world, get raised by your parents who give you good, clean water to drink, but then, when you grow up healthy enough to become a wealthy or influential person, use your wealth and power to kill off the chances of others also continuing to live healthy lives in the country of their birth. Especially, those you proudly call your progeny.

IDIOT, if your grandfather had been as stupid as you are and had born a child as stupid as you, where would you be today? You would be six feet underground, my friend, in case you’re really so stupid that you don’t know.

There is  no law in the world that states that the generality of a people should allow their fellow-countrymen to kill them or their descendants off with stupid actions.

In our past, we had laws against awudifuor [murderers]  amumoyefuor [taboo breakers] akodimmaa [rapists] and akronfuor [robbers].

Our societies were organized on the basis of TRUTH AND REAL, AS AGAINST, BOOK KNOWLEDGE and when such criminal people were found to be around, a military organization called THE ASAFO was charged with hunting them down and bringing them to justice – as publicly acknowledged and approved.

It was not possible to bribe the Asafo (who arrested malefactors). Nor was it possible for the elders who conducted trials to be influenced to sacrifice the common good for the good of the malefactors.  There were no legal technicalities to benefit the wealthy guilty.

We must rediscover some of these techniques that ensured the survival of our people in the land of their birth.

For the way we are going is the way of CERTAIN DEATH.

We ARE sacrificing future lives for the sake of a metal called gold.

Only fools prefer metal to life—no matter how valuable the metal. For metal cannot bring a dead person back to life, can it?

By Cameron Duodu