When the bandits begin to chase the soldiers, it is no longer a fight — it is a surrender.
That is exactly what is happening in Ghana today under President John Dramani Mahama’s government. The illegal miners — heavily armed, politically protected, and increasingly fearless — are now dictating the terms of engagement. Our soldiers are retreating, our police are overwhelmed, and our nation’s rivers are dying a slow, poisoned death.
Last week, over 600 galamsey bandits in Hwediem, Ahafo Region, surrounded and nearly lynched a detachment of soldiers from the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Squadron (NAIMOS). The mob threatened to burn down the local police station unless their arrested colleagues were released. The soldiers escaped, as their commander later put it, “by the mercy of God.”
Just days later, at Obuasi, another team made up of soldiers, police, EPA officials, and journalists came under gunfire from illegal miners. Two journalists were injured as they fled for their lives.
And yet, President Mahama says he will not declare a state of emergency.
That statement alone tells Ghanaians all they need to know about the state of leadership in this country. We are watching our forests burn, our rivers turn brown, and our security forces retreat — while the government debates semantics and politics.
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A Nation That Keeps Forgetting Its Own Lessons
This is not Ghana’s first dance with disaster. Every administration since the 1990s has promised to “end galamsey.” None has succeeded.
President Kufuor tried to regulate small-scale mining through legal reforms. President Mills tried diplomacy. President Mahama’s first government in 2013 launched Operation Flashout — a bold but short-lived attempt to expel illegal miners, many of them foreigners with powerful political and business connections. The operation collapsed within months.
Then came President Akufo-Addo’s “Operation Vanguard” in 2017 — a military-heavy initiative that briefly restored hope. But corruption, political infiltration, and internal sabotage killed it. Even Prof. Frimpong-Boateng, who led that effort, later admitted that powerful hands within government were sabotaging the fight for personal gain.
Now, under Mahama’s second coming, the problem has mutated. It is no longer just about illegal mining — it is about organized criminal syndicates with guns, protection, and political backing. The galamsey economy has become a state within a state.
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The Price of Political Cowardice
Let us be blunt: the galamsey problem survives because it feeds the political system. Politicians on both sides of the divide — NPP and NDC alike — take money from illegal miners to fund their campaigns. Chiefs and local officials look the other way because they get their share of the loot. And now, the very people entrusted to protect the environment are hiding from armed thugs in the forest.
This is what happens when corruption meets cowardice.
The President’s refusal to declare a state of emergency, even as soldiers are being hunted by illegal miners, is not a show of restraint — it is an admission of failure. A leader who cannot protect his security forces cannot protect his people.
A Bleeding Land and Dying Rivers
The destruction is biblical.
The River Pra is gone. The Ankobra is dying. The Offin and Birim have turned brown and toxic. The Ghana Water Company says some rivers are now so polluted that water treatment is no longer possible. The Environmental Protection Agency has become toothless, and the Forestry Commission’s authority is being erased with every excavator that rips through our reserves.
We are watching a slow-motion national suicide — and those responsible are doing it in broad daylight, under the protection of political power.
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Time to Choose: Courage or Collapse
Ghana is bleeding — from the heart, from the soil, from the rivers. And what is worse, the leadership appears more afraid of the miners than the miners are of the state.
If President Mahama truly believes in accountability and nationhood, he must act now. Not tomorrow, not after a committee report. The government must declare a state of emergency in the worst-hit regions, confiscate the weapons of these criminal gangs, and prosecute the political patrons who finance them.
Galamsey is no longer an environmental issue — it is a national security crisis.
And if this government cannot confront it head-on, then history will record that under Mahama’s watch, Ghana’s rivers died, our forests burned, and our soldiers ran.
Oh God, save this country — because its leaders will not.
