Presidential candidate of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, has said President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, must resign because he has failed the fight against small scale illegal mining, also known as galamsey.

According to him, President Akufo-Addo said in 2017 that he is prepared to put his Presidency on the line to fight illegal mining and since he has lost that fight, he must resign.

The former President and NDC flagbearer said during a current affairs programme on Asempa FM that the galamsey menace is just one of the many policies the NDC has handled wrongly since the party came to power in 2016.

“We all know what is happening with galamsey. All the NPP is doing is to remove ordinary Ghanaians with mining concessions and give it to their party people. So when you go on the grounds, DCEs, party executives are all doing galamsey now,” he said.

“Akufo-Addo has failed when it comes to the fight against the [galamsey] menace and so if he has put his tenure on the line then he probably shouldn’t be running for the next presidency, he should be resigning now,” John Mahama said.

He said it was wrong for Akufo-Addo to use the force of arms in its bid to stop illegal small-scale mining.

“You have to use some incentives,” he stressed.

The reference to the use of arms relates to Operation Vanguard, a Military-Police Joint Task Force set up by Akufo-Addo in 2017 to combat the operation of galamsey in Ghana.

According to Mahama, President Akufo-Addo confiscated excavators belonging to illegal miners only to give hand them to his party people who were also deeply involved in the illegality.

Illegal small mining remains a major environmental threat as the use of harmful chemicals and unapproved mining methods destroys vegetation and freshwater bodies.