The President of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG), Professor Eric Avabare, has launched a scathing attack on both the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) for failing Ghanaians in the fight against illegal mining, popularly known as galamsey.
Prof. Avabare in a Facebook post on Monday, September 22, 2025, was not impressed with what he described as the hypocrisy of the NPP's reawakened concern for the scourge, as the party had been part of the problem when it was in power.
I am amazed the NPP all of a sudden has an interest in the galamsey scourge, but they were horrendously worse than the devil himself. They passed the mining law LI 2462, oversaw the building of chanfangs, and gave out more mining licenses than all governments since independence put together," he wrote.
He continued further to say that the two leading political parties had failed the nation.
These two destructive parties have destroyed Ghana in the real sense of the word since they don't know what they are doing. I blame Ghanaians squarely for knowing what they know about these two parties and still queuing to vote for them, and drinking poisoned water," he went on
Prof. Avabare also assailed President John Dramani Mahama, blaming him for making excuses for not being able to fight galamsey during his last term of office.
"President JDM looked Ghanaians in the face and told them that they had short memories, and yet when he returned promising to stop galamsey, they voted for him again. Instead, he gave weak excuses for failing to stop the destruction of water bodies, forest reserves, and farmlands," he wrote.
He lamented what he described as the complacency of the Ghanaian public in holding leaders to account and likened it to what citizens of other African countries would have done.
"Citizens of a serious country like Kenya would have engaged in civil disobedience by now! The docility of the Ghanaian makes them complicit in this destruction because they also benefit from it," he said.
Prof. Avabare concluded his remarks by invoking the memory of the late Major Maxwell Mahama and other victims of violence related to illegal mining and warned that Ghanaians cannot exempt themselves from the consequences of galamsey.