Ladies and gentlemen,
We live in a country rich in wisdom – filled with professors, doctors of books, and acclaimed scholars. Yet, we are witnessing a tragedy so colossal, so shamefully preventable, that future generations may look back and ask, “What kind of people poisoned their own waters and destroyed their own land in full knowledge and silence?”
This is not a war.
This is not a foreign invasion.
This is galamsey – and it is Ghana’s slow-motion apocalypse.
Let us compare this disaster not with petty crimes, but with some of the worst environmental catastrophes in living memory. Only then can we grasp the full weight of what is unfolding before us.
The Aral Sea Disaster:
Once a vast inland sea in Central Asia, the Aral Sea was drained by reckless irrigation projects. Entire communities were wiped off the map. Fish vanished. Water turned toxic. Life around it became a slow, choking death.
So it is with our rivers.
The Ankobra, the Pra, the Offin, and even parts of the mighty Tano – once lifelines for farmers and fishermen – now flow with mercury, arsenic, and cyanide. What happened in Central Asia is happening here, in Ghana. And we are the ones turning the taps.
Chernobyl:
Chernobyl was a sudden catastrophe. Galamsey is a slow one. But the result is the same: land poisoned beyond safe use, water turned into death, and people trapped in the fallout of decisions they never made.
Our poisoned rivers are Ghana’s radioactive zones. Pregnant women fetch from them. Children bathe in them. Farmers irrigate with them. And we – the educated, the privileged, the so-called enlightened – say very little and do nothing.
The Niger Delta:
Like the oil pollution in Nigeria, galamsey is a crime of greed, corruption, and abandonment. In both cases, the very communities sitting on untold wealth are condemned to poverty, disease, and ruin. We are turning fertile farmlands into moonscapes. We are trading forests for scars and rivers for sludge – all for ounces of gold that enrich a few and enslave the many.
The Amazon Deforestation:
In Brazil, illegal mining and deforestation are wiping out the lungs of the Earth. In Ghana, we are doing the same to our own ecological soul – cutting down protected forests, destroying cocoa farms, and leaving behind deserts where lush vegetation once stood.
A Nation of Silent Witnesses
What makes our situation even more tragic is that we are not ignorant. We are not uneducated. We have scientists, engineers, economists, and environmentalists. We have institutions. Yet somehow, the destruction continues – not despite our education, but in its presence.
We have become a nation of knowers who do not act.
A country of talkers who do not act.
A people who watch the house burn and ask, “Whose job is it to put out the fire?”
The True Cost
Galamsey is not just environmental destruction. It is economic suicide, a public health crisis, a threat to food security, and a betrayal of future generations. It is a wound that no government can bandage once deep enough.
A Call to Conscience
The time has come to say enough. Enough silence. Enough excuses. Enough complicity.
We must rise – academics, traditional leaders, religious bodies, civil society, every Ghanaian with a conscience. We must treat galamsey not as a political football, but as a national emergency, greater than any election or party manifesto.
Because if we do not stop this madness, we will not have a nation left to argue about.
Let this be our Chernobyl, but not our grave.
Let it be the moment we turned around.
Let it be the year we saved our rivers.
Let it be the generation that refused to poison its children’s future.
May our grandchildren one day say:
“They were slow, but they woke up.”
My worst fear in life is if I’m unfortunate enough to live up to 70 years and my grandchild ask me ” if you knew about the dangers of galamsey all along what did you do about it”? Before I stutter to find words, she may add “your generation messed us up pretty bad”. That’s my worst fear in life and my strongest motivation to do whatever I can to stop the generational genocide.
The Jews had their holocaust in the hands of Nazi Germany and they are inflicting, without mercy, the Palestinians holocaust in real time. The GMA can stop our holocaust – galamsey.
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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
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