Godfred Yeboah Dame, Attorney General and Minister for Justice has addressed accusations made by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) regarding the participation of government representatives in illicit mining, often known as Galamsey.
Yeboah Dame slammed the NDC for what he considered “lies” and “offensive statements” made at their most recent news conference in a press release released on Wednesday, October 18, 2023.
The Attorney General reaffirmed his constitutional obligation to only bring criminal charges when thorough investigations have been completed.
He emphasized that State Attorneys regularly provide opinions on hundreds of dockets that the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) presents, and that they do not take the political ramifications of their opinions into consideration.
Yeboah Dame pointed out that the docket presented to his office was an inquiry into specific allegations by Prof. Frimpong-Boateng against specifically named individuals and was not, as the NDC claimed, a probe into general Galamsey problems in the country with regard to the claims made by the NDC against government officials.
The press conference was “vitiated by a fraudulent attempt to explain their orchestrated lies and abuses,” he continued, adding the NDC had failed to present any substantiation of the accusations made against the named persons. Yeboah Dame encouraged the populace to reject the “discredited assertions” of the NDC as they lacked all credibility.
The NDC’s track record in the struggle against Galamsey was also brought up by the Attorney General, who referred to it as “wretched and miserable.”
He pointed out that the NDC’s punishment policy consisted of a pitiful fine or a period of up to three years in prison and that they failed to apprehend and prosecute even one Galamsey kingpin, including the “Galamsey queen” Aisha Huang.
Yeboah Dame compared this to the Minerals and Mining (Amendment) Act, 2019, which he claimed significantly increased the punishment regime for illicit mining to a minimum of 15 years for a Ghanaian and 20 years for a non-Ghanaian.
Yeboah Dame stressed in his closing remarks that discerning Ghanaians could see through the NDC’s lies and propaganda.
He asked the populace to exercise caution and not be persuaded by misleading information disseminated by politicians looking to advance their political agendas.
