In May 2016, The Economist made a tweet about the effects of small-scale illegal mining (galamsey) in Cote d’Ivoire, to which the current Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, reacted.
The tweet read, “In Ivory Coast, the government has shut down more than 280 illegal mines since last year.”
In a retweet, Oppong-Nkrumah, who was at the time a parliamentary candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the Ofoase Ayirebi constituency, called out the government of the day for their poor fight against the galamsey menace in the country.
“And in Ghana it’s Galamsey galore. Governments can act if they really want to,” he retweeted.
Today, the government of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, under which Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah serves as Minister of Information, has been bombarded with perhaps the worst effects of galamsey in the country.
This is beside the several attempts made by the government to fight the menace, which continues to destroy water bodies as well as forest covers.
See the tweet below:
And in Ghana it’s Galamsey galore. Governments can act if they really want to. https://t.co/J3e3Id9iud
— Kojo Oppong Nkrumah (@konkrumah) May 11, 2016