Ghana’s soldiers prefer protecting galamsey sites to peace-keeping missions – Odike

The founder and leader of the United Progressive Party (UPP), Akwasi Addai Odike has lost all hope in the galamsey fight.

According to him, all stakeholders have shown little commitment to the fight against the menace.

“The fight against galamsey keeps failing because successive governments are part of the problem. They extort monies behind the scenes from these galamseyers [illegal miners]. I know what goes into these things. They pay their masters who are the politicians to stay away from them to enable them do their nefarious activities,” he told Umaru Sanda Amadu on Face to Face on Citi TV.

He said the President has lost the fight against galamsey though he has injected millions into it.

He said key among the problem is that “soldiers prefer to go to galamsey sites than peace-keeping missions, since they stand to benefit from the illegal activities.”

“They go there to protect those who are destroying the environment. They do not go there to stop the activities, as they make it seem. This is the truth. We must speak truth to power and tell them in their faces. We were here when some military officers who were arrested for nefarious activities in the Atewa forest confessed before the court that they were sent from the Jubilee House. What has happened to the case?”

Odike added that traditional leaders have not done any better.

Mr. Odike has already incurred the wrath of traditional leaders in Kumasi after he accused them of being complicit in illegal mining activities in the Ashanti Region.