Colonel Festus Aboagye (Rtd) has lifted the lid on systemic corruption within Ghana’s Police Service, blaming a deeply entrenched “returns” culture for undermining the fight against illegal mining.
During a conversation on The KeyPoints with Alfred Ocansey, he described how routine kickbacks within the service are stifling law enforcement efforts.
“Any revenues, whether in galamsey areas, on the market, on the roads—wherever the police collect money—they call it returns,” Col. Aboagye said.
“The station officer, the police officer on the road, will send returns to the district, from district to division, from division to regional, from regional to national. Everybody gets his or her cut. That’s international.”
He believes that the only way to tackle this entrenched system is to reduce overfamiliarity within the force by rotating officers more frequently. “One way of making sure that the anti-galamsey fight is effective is to cause the IGP to move them around. Indeed, that itself is good practice,” he suggested.
“That is why no official stays in their office for probably more than two years. You become so acclimatised, so accustomed to your environment… over-familiar. Nothing bothers you again,” he said.
Col. Aboagye also touched on the Minerals Commission, which he believes shares blame in perpetuating the crisis. “People were saying that the Minerals Commission gentleman should move because he was the one who granted all the licenses. And he cannot tell us that he did that because that was his mandate.”
“If we are going to revoke that L.I. 2462 or 2642, even if we are going to amend it, those who work with the L.I. and issue ridiculously large numbers of licenses should all be removed from office and get new people to come and work with the new vision of the new government,” he added.
His comments have reignited calls for a total overhaul of Ghana’s regulatory and enforcement structures if the country is to make any real headway in curbing the galamsey menace.
