In March this year, a group of armed men, alleged to be National Security operatives, stormed a licensed mining site at Apinto, a community in Tarkwa in the Western Region, drove away the owners, and took over the site.
The site was subsequently handed over to persons believed to be associated with the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) for illegal mining/galamsey. This group of illegal miners is led by Ebenezer Amemagakpor, alias Commander or Aboyanga, a known NDC activist.
After the takeover of the site, which operates using high-voltage/high-power-consuming pumps, the legitimate mine owners, RMG Mining Limited, reported the matter to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and asked it to disconnect power to the site to avoid the accumulation of bills in the company’s name.
ECG obliged and disconnected power to the site. However, this was for a different reason. It claimed RMG hadn’t paid its bills.
NDC MP for the area, Robert Wisdom Cudjoe, wrote to ECG to request for reconnection to enable what was illegal mining to continue.
He told ECG that national security had tasked him to oversee the mine until the resolution of a supposed conflict over the mine.
“I wish to bring to your attention that there was a recent dispute between two mining contractors over the ownership of the concession, which required the intervention of national security. Following their directive, I have been tasked with overseeing the site until an amicable resolution is reached,” Mr. Cudjoe’s letter to the ECG said.
In the letter, the MP described the site in question as a community mine site. But at the time of his letter, the government had banned all community mining, and so there couldn’t have been a community mine site.
“It has come to my attention that this disconnection has severely impacted the mining site’s ability to operate, particularly in powering pumps to dewater the pits,” Mr. Cudjoe wrote in the letter addressed to the Tarkwa District Manager of ECG, Benjamin Odame Thompson.
“If the situation persists, there is a high risk of over-flooding, which could lead to operational setbacks and potential job losses for many youths engaged in mining activities at the site.”
Power was subsequently reconnected, but ECG says it did not do it. Rather, ECG officials insist, it was the illegal miners who climbed the high-tension poles to reconnect the mine to the electricity grid.
ECG staff say they have been threatened repeatedly that they would be shot or killed if they attempt to cut power again. The high-tension poles connecting the mine are now guarded by the same groups controlling the mine.
“We sent our staff to disconnect them because we have not given them permission to reconnect,” a source at the ECG head office in Accra told The Fourth Estate.
“When we went there to disconnect them, they came after us with thugs. They threatened us that if we tried to disconnect them, they would shoot us.”
Chinese nationals at the site
While the illegal mining boomed at the site, some foreign nationals joined. The Fourth Estate can reveal that at least six Chinese nationals were on the site as of July 17, 2025, operating and repairing mining equipment, in violation of Ghana’s Minerals and Mining Act, which prohibits foreigners from participating in small-scale mining.
Section 96 of the Minerals and Mining Act states that “a non-Ghanaian or a foreign company shall not provide mining support services for a small-scale mining operation.”
Despite this, mining activities persist on the RMG concession with the active involvement of the Chinese illegal mining, while the site accumulates electricity bills.
ECG bills accumulating
The illegal mining operation continues and has racked up more than GHC2 million in electricity bills, ECG records show. Only GHC 150,000 has been paid as of August 4.
RMG Mining, the legitimate owners of the concession, continued to complain about the illegal takeover of their mine by alleged National Security operatives and the subsequent conversion of the mine into a galamsey site.
They were subsequently summoned to Blue Gate—the National Security Head Office in Accra.
The company’s managing director represented RMG Mining at the meeting. The MP also attended. The Managing Director of RMG, Osman Bukari, told The Fourth Estate that at the Blue Gate meeting, “the agreement was that [the MP] should allow me to go and start work. But we’ve never been allowed back.”
MP responds
The MP remembers differently.
The MP claims he was only asked to help resolve tensions between “two contractors” and insists he had no personal stake in the mine.
It is curious how National Security will become a mediator of a supposed dispute over a mine site, bypassing the regulator, the Minerals Commission.
When the MP was asked about this, he retorted, “Do you think National Security does not know about the Minerals Commission?”
When The Fourth Estate asked him which of the two factions contesting the concession he was backing to operate the mine, he said, apart from the National Security directive, his involvement had become necessary because of what he described as a leadership crisis at the site.
The MP, who is also a board member of the Minerals Income Investment Fund, added that the workers had been left at the site without direction.
However, Osman Bukari, the Managing Director of RMG, dismissed the claim and insisted that all workers of RMG Mining Limited were driven away from the site when National Security raided it.
ECG sources say the matter was reported to the police, but the police have failed to act on it.
When contacted, the Western Central Police Commander denied knowledge of the incident, saying he was on leave when it happened.
National Security ignores request for interview
The Fourth Estate sent two letters requesting interviews with Col. Robert Talleh, the Director of Operations at National Security, and DCOP Abdul-Osman Razak, the National Security Coordinator, to clarify issues around its operations at the mine and the illegal takeover.
Neither of them has responded.
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