The Board Chair of the Forestry Commission, Prof. Martin Oteng-Ababio, has defended the government’s refusal to declare a state of emergency in the fight against illegal mining, arguing that past demands for such drastic measures were made without a full appreciation of the scale of the crisis.
Speaking in an interview on Joy FM‘s Top Story on Thursday, September 11, Prof. Oteng-Ababio said while the then-opposition National Democratic Congress had persistently urged the previous government to invoke emergency powers to halt galamsey, that call was made “without fully understanding the magnitude of the problem.”
“On top of my head, they were not empowered. They did not, perhaps, understand the full integrity in the fight,” he stated. “But now that we took power and got to know what is involved—the magnitude of the challenge—then you are in a better place to fashion out a modus operandi that will not fail.”
Pressed on whether President John Mahama, who had previously served as head of state, should have been aware of the scale of galamsey even before returning to power, Prof. Oteng-Ababio maintained that the current intensity of the menace is unprecedented.
“When President Mahama was president, people were not using guns to chase soldiers. It wasn’t at this magnitude. The scale of the problem was not what it is today,” he said.
Critics, however, argue that media reports and civil society warnings had long portrayed the devastation caused by galamsey, suggesting that the NDC was aware of the risks yet used the issue as political leverage.
Prof. Oteng-Ababio dismissed this claim, insisting that the government’s current position reflects a deeper, more practical understanding of the fight than was possible from opposition.