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The founder and leader of the United Front Party (UFP), Akwasi Addae Odike, has said that President Akufo-Addo’s recent meeting with Chiefs and the Metropolitan Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) in a bid to fight galamsey would amount to nothing.
The anti-galamsey crusader alleged that majority of the participants at the meeting including the president are all beneficiaries of the galamsey menace.
He therefore believes that the president’s renewed fight against the galamsey practices will yield no results because of the gross incompetence shown towards ending the canker from the onset.
Odike was thus quick to describe the meeting by the president in Kumasi as a “galamsey shareholders meeting” which was initiated only to elaborate and discuss the benefits to derive from the practice which is contrary to what he made the public believe.
“…What did they go to the Kumasi to do? it was a shareholders meeting that was organised, I said it is a galamsey shareholders meeting. When Banking shareholders meet, they do so to discuss their benefits.
“Some of the chiefs are involved in the galamsey practice, he [President Akufo-Addo] is also engaged in the practice so they [shareholders] met. It was a meeting among shareholders, “3y3 Wonky3 Di” translating ‘sharing among themselves,” Odike told Kwamina Sam Biney on the Anopa Bofo morning show, Monday, October 10, 2022.
He stressed that the ‘portrayed commitment’ of the president in his supposed recent renewed fight against illegal mining is nothing to write home about because there was not a “single solution outlined from the meeting.”
Buttressing why in his view the meeting was not going to add anything positive to the fight, the outspoken businessman cum politician opined that most of the chiefs whom the president sought for their assistance are all engaged in the galamsey.
“If indeed Nana Addo says he is fighting to eradicate the galamsey menace, then the media must ask this one question; when has the president embarked on a working visit to know the devasting effect of galamsey activities in the country?
“He claimed to end a canker meanwhile you have not even visited not a single site of the galamsey, therefore how can he fight to end it, common sense must tell him that he must be visiting sites to know the extent of damage to our numerous water bodies, lands and the natural resources,” he said.
He wondered why the president after putting his presidency on the line of the galamsey fight is still at post and had not resigned however he had resorted to calling on the assistance of chiefs.
Odike concluded that had it not been that the president is a beneficiary of galamsey, he should have been “honest” as well as “the God-fearing factor” resigned in Kumasi before returning to Accra after he admitted failing the fight, he gambled his presidency for.
