- A court in Accra has sentenced Bernard Antwi Boasiako, a regional chairman of Ghana’s opposition New Patriotic Party, to 20 years in prison for unlicensed mining in the country’s Samreboi concession.
- In recent years, the area has been massively degraded by illegal mining, known locally as “galamsey,” damaging remaining wildlife habitat, destroying farmland, and altering natural drainage patterns.
- Civil society hopes the conviction of a prominent politician signals that political cover allowing illegal mining will now be reined in.
ACCRA — In a landmark ruling, the Accra High Court has sentenced Bernard Antwi Boasiako, a regional chairman of the opposition New Patriotic Party, to 20 years in prison for facilitating unlicensed mining in the Samreboi concession.
The concession is in Ghana’s Western Region, in the Upper Guinean Forest Belt that extends across the subregion from Togo and Ghana in the east to Guinea in the west. The concession is set in the remains of the belt’s tropical rainforest.
While large parts of the landscape at Samreboi have been logged and converted to cocoa plantations or other farmland in recent decades, significant tracts of natural forest remain, including the nearby Tano Nimiri and Aboi forest reserves.
In recent years, the area has been massively degraded by illegal mining, known locally as “galamsey,” damaging remaining wildlife habitat, destroying farmland, and altering natural drainage patterns.
This has left a landscape deeply scarred by abandoned pits. During heavy rainfall in June, the Tano River burst its banks and submerged more than 200 houses in Samreboi and neighboring communities, with some buildings collapsing entirely.
The NPP official’s conviction and sentencing, handed down on July 20, has prompted energetic public conversations about enforcement of Ghana’s mining laws and the protection of the environment.
Kenneth Ashigbey, the chief executive of the Ghana Chamber of Mines, which represents companies involved in mining and processing minerals — but not small-scale miners like Antwi Boasiako’s firm, Akonta Mining, or the unlicensed operators he was found guilty of instructing to mine in Samreboi — described the 20-year sentence as appropriate.
“We are seeing the impact of the changfans [floating diesel-powered dredges], the excavators, the dredgers that are going into the belly of these river bodies. They are polluting the stability of water,” he said. “You are having mercury, cyanide, arsenic and heavy metals go into our water bodies. It’s resulting in women with still births, deformed babies and all of that.”
Echoing an allegation made during the trial, he said illegal mining of the concession had played a role in the unusual flooding recently.
He also said that royalties from the gold mined in Samreboi have not improved the lives of the people there. “The few greedy folks have gotten very rich, because of the gold they alone have had. But for the masses, it’s been poverty. It’s been squalor,” he told Mongabay.
“People who are working in the timber farm, for example, have lost their livelihood. Farmlands have been destroyed and then the social vices that accompany illegal mining also in this community: Prostitution, drug abuse and then significantly the flood that happened.”
Awula Serwah, convener of environmental sustainability NGO Eco Conscious Citizens, said Antwi Boasiako’s sentence will serve as a deterrent to other illegal miners.
The problem, she said, is the political colours that have been attached to the fight against these activities. “When people hide behind politics, thinking that there are no consequences for their actions on the environment, the fight cannot be won and that becomes a danger to our society,” she said.
Serwah said laws against illegal mining must be applied regardless of who is found culpable. She added that attention should be paid to other regions where illegal mining continues to take place.
Banner image: A journalist with law enforcement officials at an illegal mine site in Ghana in 2024. Image by Paadebrah via Wikicommons (CC 0 1.0)
Successful campaign proves Ghana’s forests are worth more than gold (commentary)
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