People can sit in Accra and say galamsey fight is succeeding – Prof Aning
Security analyst Professor Kwesi Aning has urged government agencies to publish daily turbidity levels of major rivers in Ghana and monthly reports on the state of forests as open benchmarks to measure the impact of the campaign against illegal mining.
Speaking in an interview, on Saturday, [Oct 11, 2025], Prof Aning said these two indicators would provide citizens with simple, verifiable evidence of progress or failure in the fight against galamsey.
“Let Ghana Water Company publish daily turbidity levels, and let the Forestry Commission issue monthly forest-status reports,” he said. “Then we will know whether things are improving or not. That is the only way we can benchmark our success.”
He argued that the absence of measurable public data has allowed official claims and political narratives to go untested.
“People can sit in Accra and say the fight is succeeding, but if the rivers remain brown and the forest canopy keeps shrinking, then it is only talk,” he cautioned. “We must move from rhetoric to evidence. Accountability must be grounded in facts that every Ghanaian can see.”
Professor Aning explained that the daily and monthly reports would not only inform citizens but also reveal whether district officials, environmental agencies, and political leaders are fulfilling their responsibilities.
“Without clear metrics, corruption and disinformation thrive,” he said. “Once the numbers are public, there will be no hiding place for those manipulating the system.”
He warned that the newly launched National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Squadron (NAIMOS), a 400-member joint task force drawn from the security services, could fall victim to the same weaknesses that hampered earlier anti-galamsey operations.
“These are our sons and brothers in uniform,” he said. “They are only about four hundred. The question is, how do we protect them from the same corruption that undermined Operation Vanguard and Operation Halt? If we do not build systems that shield them, we will lose them too.”
Professor Aning stressed that transparency and protection from political influence must go together.
“New uniforms and new names mean nothing if the underlying interests remain untouched,” he cautioned. “NAIMOS must be insulated from political control and financial temptation; otherwise, the same cycle will repeat.”
The call came during a discussion on the effectiveness of government anti-galamsey measures and the need for genuine, measurable accountability.
“You can send soldiers, you can pass new laws, but if we cannot measure the outcome daily and monthly, we are only pretending to fight,” he said.