<<Print>>Sir, good day wherever you might be, it has been a long time since we met. The last time we met was at the 25thAnniversary Celebrations of the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) on their premises in Accra.
I remember I was trying to avoid you when you were greeting some of the dignitaries around from all walks of life including politicians. You quickly called me ‘Kwesi, don’t run away’, and I turned and we shook hands. You asked me how I was doing and jokingly said, ‘eei, aye kese papa oo’. I smiled because I did not want you to think that it is the Better Ghana Agenda which has made me bloat the way I am. I am just suffering from adult kwashiorkor.
Anyway, I have also been hearing you in dispatch on various FM stations expressing your views on national issues. What has necessitated this letter to you is an interview you had with Peace FM early this week on a number of national issues, particularly on the destruction, I repeat destruction and not the drying up of rivers and streams in the country. When the interviewer raised the issue of river bodies and streams drying up, your answer was that rivers dry up and even cited an example of a river or a stream in your beloved Holy Winneba which was drying up even when you were a child.
Yes, I agree with you that rivers and streams have been drying up since time immemorial and this can be testified by anybody who has ever lived in a village that depends on flowing stream or a river. I had that experience when I left Takoradi and joined my grandparents in a village along the Tarkwa-Dunkwa railway line, Imbraim to be specific. There was perennial water shortage as a result of the drying up of the rivers and streams, however, there were unwritten rules that were punishable by the community that no one was to farm along the banks of any stream or river. In that case, the streams and the rivers were not exposed to the hot tropical sun and the consequent siltation of the rivers and the streams. Anybody who was found to have breached that unwritten rule was severely punished as a deterrent to others.
Sir, I have gone this length to support your answer to the fact that rivers and streams do dry up naturally, but my main reason for writing to you is your virtual plea to Ghanaians to change their attitudes towards the environment, and somehow pleading with illegal miners whose activities have destroyed the nation’s water bodies to desist from their nation wrecking activities. In all honesty, I was very disappointed with those statements and the attribution of our attitudes to the current state of our dear nation, Ghana.
My disappointment with your statement stem from the fact that you are a military officer, twice ex-Chief of Defense Staff in the revered Armed Forces of the Republic of Ghana, an institution whose discipline is unparalleled in all social facets the world over. While the discipline in any individual military personnel is infused in him or her during the training and recruitment, the sustenance of the dos and don’ts in the army, is by punishing and disciplining anybody, no matter her or his position for any breach of the rules, regulations and laws of the institution.
I have never ever seen a military personnel of whatever rank, emptying the content of a sachet or plastic container and throwing the container anywhere with careless abandon. Sir, they are Ghanaians like all of us, but why do they behave differently? Sir, this country is sinking and gradually becoming a jungle because we are not enforcing the laws we have ourselves put in place to regulate our conduct and protect all of us. I live in Takoradi and see the Pra River openly being torn apart by illegal miners, indeed criminals who are exploiting our collective resources for their personal benefits and destroying our heritage in the process, and all we can do is to call for a change of attitudes?
The Ankobra river is gone, Pra is gone, Offin is gone, Birim is gone and so many others through the activities of criminals, and the only thing we can do is to call for a change of attitudes? Sir, where are the laws and the law enforcement agencies? Yes, I also heard you lambast the Police who are the law enforcement agencies and expressed a certain lack of trust in them when the interviewer talked about the Police enforcing the laws. Are they not trained and recruited by the state? Why is the military more disciplined when all of them are agents of the state and trained by the state?
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There is no country anywhere in the world that has attained discipline and lawful conduct primarily on the volition of the citizens’ own change of attitudes. It is the rigorous enforcement of the laws irrespective of who is involved, that makes for attitudinal changes. Sir, I have friends in the military, they are sent to arrest illegal miners and confiscate their equipment, just for some higher political anonymous individual to order them, I mean the officers who have risked their lives to do their work to the service of their country, to release the equipment back to the criminals. They are so demoralized and humiliated by some unpatriotic political idiots on account of power.
Sir, you have been assigned a national security job in this country, the biggest threat to any nation’s security is hunger and thirst. This nation’s security threat is at its peak and it did not start today. Criminals who are seen brazenly appropriating national resource and destroying them do not require a change of attitude to stop them. They need to be arrested, put before the law courts and convicted to save this nation. We have set up so many bodies with responsibilities to protect our collective resources, what do we see them do?
What is the Water Resources Commission doing in the area of protecting our water resources? They watch unconcerned when people build in water courses and destroy Ramsyer sites; we pay them too. We allow people to build along the banks of rivers when they don’t have basic toilets and proper refuse disposal systems, nonexistent drainage systems tell you Sir, that all waste water will flow into the river or the stream. It is only the law and not a change of attitude that will address the issue and save our water bodies and prevent hunger and thirst.
Sir, I know how patriotic and passionate you are about this nation. I am just like you, but I do not have the power to change so much except my own life because I respect the law. If half of us undisciplined Ghanaians would have to die or be kept in prison to ensure sanity among the rest, and build a nation we can proudly bequeath to our unborn generations, let us do that for the sake of this nation and those yet to be born. Sir, what will the next generation say about us when they come to be shown the course of Densu River, which no longer exists? A dead Pra, Tano, Ankobra, Birim, add to them, when in our time we used them, misused them, abused them and finally killed them. This is a trauma I cannot contain and visualize moving forward.
The Minerals Commission issue mining licenses to prospective companies without even knowing what exists on the surface of the land and what economic activities pertain there in the interest of the local people. The companies come and destroy everything as if life is all about gold. Sir, just read this by the Minerals Commission. ‘A small Scale Mining License governs winning and mining of minerals such as gold and diamonds by effective and efficient methods. Operators are obliged to observe good mining practices, health and safety rules and pay due regard to the protection of the environment during mining operations’. Sir, who ensures that?
Our national security is endangered by non-enforcement of our laws, let’s deal with that. Cheers, Sir with three tots of mahogany bitters.