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Montecristo
That Ghana is gradually being taken over by extremists, while politicians on both sides of the political divide play power in Accra and Kumasi, is a fact we all as citizens may be ignoring.
We are told by one online news portal that, following the March 14, 2025, incident at Attakrom near Bibiani in the Western North Region, where some individuals in possession of firearms, including a pistol and shotguns, openly discharged them at a funeral, the police have arrested two suspects.
The suspects, the report explained, were arrested on Wednesday, April 2, 2025.
The information, based on a police statement, further highlighted that the incident was captured on video with the individuals assembling themselves at the funeral and discharging their firearms. The naked illegality was shared on social media.
Credibility of story
The online portal being referred to is not your blogger aberration that offends our social media space; it is the Daily Graphic’s online portal. And it insists that following the investigations, the police concluded that the individuals were illegally possessing those firearms.
In the same statement, the police identified the two suspects as 41-year-old Frank Afoko and 31-year-old Kojo Agyapong. They are said to have admitted to being the individuals featured in the video footage during interrogation by the Regional Investigation Team led by the Crime Officer.
Both suspects have since been detained to assist with further investigations, while efforts are ongoing to apprehend other individuals involved in the incident who remain at large.
Impunity
What further evidence do we need to tag Ghana as a ticking time bomb, despite the assembling of military equipment and logistics on our Northern borders that still leak with migrants from Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali trickling into our mining communities and forests armed.
Never mind where they got armed; it is either they brought them in or acquired them from local flashpoints, including Ashaiman, Bawku and Nima.
I recall that in the mid-70s when we were schooling at O’Reilly Secondary School, Accra, there were overaged boys who insisted that arms at the time can be acquired at a Kokomlemle Hotel in the traffic lights leading to JoyFM.
From pistols through AK47s, they told us kids that beyond buying foreign exchange from that point, it was normal visiting there and being linked to goons who came in and out supply and vanish.
Occasionally, the Military Intelligence nabbed a few of them. Largely, however, it was still vibrant lucrative trade because soldiers then on UNIFIL peacekeeping trips dropped supplies which were ready market for armed robbers and vested interests in chieftaincy matters up North.
Slain policeman on galamsey duties
Is there a link between galamsey and proliferation of illicit arms in the country? Yes. Is there a proliferation between land guard activities and chieftaincy conflicts? Yes. Is the political class and Police Chiefs aware about the phenomenon? Yes. Are they as a matter of lawful concern, policy and strategy dealing with the issue? I don’t know.
But this yet more evidence post-Nana Akufo-Addo that the level of impunity in crime related to galamsey and illicit trade in arms. So, it is also evidence to those national security operatives serving the political class, instead of Ghana that we aren’t safe.
This is the story: The Ghana Police Service has launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Constable John Kwabena Dogbey, which occurred on April 2, 2025, at Assin Domeabra in the Central Region.
Several regions in Ghana are blessed with gold. They are the Eastern, Central, Western and Western North Regions.
The rest are Ashanti and Bono Regions. Significantly, those regions are also blessed with cocoa, timber and foodstuffs. That is aside of the fact of them being endowed with waterbodies and abundant rainfall, together with a beautiful all-year-round climate that is being threatened by human activities in greed and devastation.
According to a statement issued by the Public Affairs Officer of the Central North Region, ASP Francis Onyina, preliminary investigations indicate that Constable Dogbey, who was part of the Central North Regional Police Anti-Galamsey Taskforce, slipped and fell into the Offin River, while dismantling a chanfan machine used by illegal miners.
He stated that, after several hours of intensive search efforts involving local divers, the constable’s body was recovered and transported to the St. Francis Xavier Hospital in Assin Fosu. Unfortunately, the medical officer on duty pronounced him dead upon arrival.
The body has since been transferred to the Police Hospital morgue in Accra for preservation and a post-mortem examination. ASP Onyina added that the Police Administration is in contact with the bereaved family and is providing the necessary support during this difficult period.
The Taskforce was able to dismantle inanimate logistics and equipment, including one chanfan machine. In addition, they managed to take custody of two pumping machines, two excavator batteries and three excavator keys and their chassis numbers.
Unfortunately, the Task Force couldn’t save the precious life of a member. And people say the Military shouldn’t lead the galamsey fight? We must have something to hide…all of us making that argument.
Armed goons
As for the tons of goodwill and mouth-only support for the galamsey fight, it is two a pesewa; what we lack is firm, decisive, unalloyed commitment regarding taking the fight to the monsters and goons on our waterbodies and in our forests.
This story about a Forestry Officer in lawful galamsey fight having been killed in his line of duty alarms me to the hilt. But that shows the extent to which galamsey goons and cocoons take us for fools or hope we get weary chasing them.
It is like our childhood sight and sound I experienced with a bearded he goat in the neighbourhood where I grew up as an adolescent before moving from main La town to DeGaulle Park or Mawuli Junction and Palm Wine Junction on the La Kojo Sardine road.
This goat of Northern breed fathered most of the kids from the several nanny goats around at a time the local government people (Town Council) were more interested in fighting malaria than taming goats and dogs that were left to feed anywhere.
So, this goat, very fond of corn dough, loved a compound that was right behind ours. It knows when processing of kenkey begins in that adjoining compound. Inch by inch, he inched closer to a wooden vessel loaded with milled maize.
Each time, it took a step, it did so more cautiously than the first step until it is sure that there is a safe distance between it and a human enemy.
Community sentinels
Unfortunately, in this instance I witnessed, it didn’t know that a hunter dog was around. In a community where dogs and goats were friends, it didn’t know the dog had assumed the role of a sentinel over the corn dough. And that would be the last time it would be entering that compound on account of a chase it got that landed it in a muddy drain.
Since goats hate water and mud, for that matter, it caught pneumonia and almost died but for the free veterinary treatment dogs and goats and sheep received under the Kwame Nkrumah administration. The force of deterrent from a dog saved the livelihood of the kenkey seller – even if by just a ball of kenkey.
But this is no ball of kenkey or corn dough the weight of a ball of kenkey; it is a national heritage – our cocoa, gold, timber, waterbodies, inland fish resources, lithium, foodstuffs, including cocoyam freely growing under cocoa trees and snails…
Considering that galamsey actors find it convenient to buy and stock weapons to fight Forestry Commission Task Force personnel, Police and the Military, will it be too much, if we give them animals let loose in our forest and along our waterways and bodies a dose of their own medicine?
Let the sector minister and president respond to that…Again, will it be too much arming lawful institutions to deter them, regardless of their nationality and party colours? That is the dilemma confronting us – with scallywags holding us by the balls and us being naïve about the reality of the harm they inflict on us.
