Deputy Director of Elections and IT for the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Rashid Tanko-Computer, has launched a scathing attack on the New Patriotic Party (NPP), accusing them of deliberately pursuing destructive policies that left Ghana’s forest reserves in ruins.
Tanko-Computer alleged that NPP officials enabled and even participated in illegal mining activities, commonly known as galamsey.
“These people did a sustained strategy of destroying the forest cover. You remember the word they used ‘party hia sika.’ And Ghanaians were quiet about it,” he said on the maiden edition of Prime Insight on Joy Prime on Saturday, August 16.
“When they said ‘party hia sika,’ therefore they should allow them to go in there. Even government officials were importing excavators and moving heavy machines into the forest areas, destroying everything.”
He argued that the NPP’s eight years in office saw an entrenched culture of forest degradation and reckless exploitation of natural resources.
“They used 96 months, that is eight years, to destroy the forest. The evidence abounds; everybody can see it. When they went to Parliament and passed that act that allowed them to go into forest reserves to mine, what were they thinking?” Tanko-Computer questioned.
According to him, the governing party cannot expect the problem to be fixed overnight after years of damage.
“If somebody uses 96 months to destroy something, do you expect us to use eight months to resolve that problem?” he asked.
“The presidency was not committed. This is a president who said he had put his presidency on the line, yet his own committee members were involved in galamsey.”
Tanko-Computer’s comments highlight the ongoing political blame game surrounding galamsey, a menace that continues to threaten Ghana’s environment, agriculture, and water bodies.
