I am terribly tempted to put the above rhetorical question to you now because of the glaring inconsistency between what you said in 2017 on fighting ‘galamsey’ when you ascended the Presidential seat and what ‘galamsey’ is doing to our forest reserves and water bodies right now under your watch.

Under your Presidency, the ‘traditional galamsey’ we all knew years past has now transitioned into ‘high-tech-galamsey’(HTG) with devastating consequences. This is highly worrying and saddening!

Mr. President, before I ask a few rhetorical questions about your statement on the fight against the galamsey menace then and now, the Idioms dictionary explains ‘to lay or put something or reputation on the line’ means ‘causing one to risk losing your reputation or your job’. To lay or put oneself on the line also means ‘to speak truthfully and directly about your feelings’.

Suspiciously, your emphatic statement on the galamsey menace then was made before the beginning of your second term. This has triggered some few rhetorical questions in my mind that need to be asked while you are still on the Presidential seat:

1. What exactly did you mean when you said that you put your Presidency on the line in this matter?

2. Was your emphatic statement to fight galamsey a hollow political statement just to win votes in your second term in 2020?

3. Why are you so silent and/or dragging your feet now to take strong action on halting the flourishing HTG during your regime?

4. Why are you not deciding to resign or risk your Presidential seat now since galamsey has defeated you and badly exposed your insincerity and lack of commitment to use your executive powers to stop it once and for all?

5. What kind of leadership or legacy are you dreaming of leaving behind for future generations and your Party, NPP when you are dead and gone?

I strongly believe my above-stated crucial questions are also on the minds of many other Ghanaians now because the reality on the ground confirms the assumption that you have misled or abused the real meaning of putting your well-fought Presidency on the line and you should risk losing your Presidency by resigning now since you woefully failed to stop or contain the galamsey menace.

It is apparently clear to me that you did not mean even half the real meaning of paying a heavy price politically if you failed to fight the age-old socio-economic galamsey problem.

If not for the evidence of destruction of our biodiversity-rich forest reserves and pollution of major river bodies coupled with the bold documentaries by Erastus Asare Donkor of Joy News and the damming galamsey report authored by the former Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, your insincerity of tackling the galamsey menace would have gone unnoticed.

Mr. President, your ‘Presidential Galamseyers’ as mentioned by Prof. Frimpong-Boateng in his galamsey status report in 2019 did not help you at all but rather badly soiled your Presidency, which you put on the line in the matter.

Mr. President, I am tempted to believe that you will go down in Ghana’s history as someone who misled Ghanaians by appearing to speak truthfully and directly about your feelings on the galamsey debacle and doing nothing about it.

Sadly, your legacy on the galamsey fight is likely to be remembered as a gargantuan failure coupled with poor corruption fight and badly managed economy, which did not help your Presidency either.