Ransford Gyampo, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Ghana has defended the credibility of Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng against that of Godfred Yeboah Dame, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice.
Prof Ransford Gyampo says putting the two personalities side-by-side, he will believe what the former Minister of Science, Technology, Innovation and Environment says than that of the Attorney-General.
His comment follows an advice given to the government by the Attorney-General, Godfred Yeboah Dame, on the report by Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng on the dissolved IMCIM he chaired.
The A-G, Godfred Dame, had advised government that there was nothing substantial in the Prof. Frimpong-Boateng 36-page report titled “Report on the work of IMCIM so far and the way forward,” as evidence to charge persons implicated in it for prosecution.
In his address to the A-G based on the advice he gave the government, Prof. Gyampo reminded him that there are people in the country who, aside from what’s provided in the report, bear testimony to the destruction being caused on Ghana’s lands and water bodies through galamsey, and to say there is no evidence for prosecution is an insult to Ghanaians’ intelligence.
He addressed him on The KeyPoints on TV3 Saturday, October 21, 2023, as follows:
Dear Godfred Dame, we are not fools. You’re a young man like myself. You’ve been given that important position of trust as the Attorney-General of the land. The good people of Ghana expect you to discharge your duty with a sense of patriotism.
We must not always seek to protect the partisan interest. Tomorrow your party will not be in office and take note of this; people are dying, having liver diseases, having their kidneys failing. It may not happen to you today because you may have the resources for flying yourself abroad. Whilst you’re gone, your nephews and nieces may be suffering.
It’s important that we have a certain sense of patriotism in the discharge of our duties. Galamsey is a very serious phenomenon that is leaving a very dangerous ecological risk on our environment and it’s affecting all of us.
If we want to fight it, we must not begin to be doing some of these things when a comprehensive report has been given to you and you want to sound as if it’s rubbish and that everything in it makes no sense and that nobody is culpable.
Between Frimpong-Boateng and the partisanly appointed Godfred Dame, who can we believe? I believe in Frimpong-Boateng and whatever he is saying more. He’s a human being, he may have his own faults here and there but it does not make sense to me for any Attorney-General who has been offered a partisan appointment to come and tell me that everything in the report is absolute nonsense and must be thrown away. It doesn’t make sense. It means you’re insulting our intelligence. Please you cannot insult our intelligence.
Some of us, we also live in Ghana. It’s not all of us who are partisan bootlickers who’ll swallow hook,line and sinker the bogus rubbish that sometimes you guys throw to us. We’ll subject some of the things to strict proof and scrutiny and let you know that not all of us are fools. It’s impossible for anyone to tell us that everything Frimpong-Boateng said is rubbish and have to be thrown away.
Then I heard him (Godfred Dame) say that he has done better in the fight against galamsey than everybody. It’s not about talking but we should be able to bear testimony of what has been done. It’s not about blowing your own horn.
If you’re a young appointee and you receive the privilege and the honour to serve, you must serve such that tomorrow, your activities will not shut the door to future young or youthful appointments.
It is a monumental embarrassment for any Attorney-General to insinuate that the composite report given to them by Frimpong-Boateng contains all garbage and must be thrown into the bin.
It is something that we must not accept as a people. We must openly express our disappointment and dissatisfaction about the way and manner a legal opinion has been proffered by a no-mean a person than the Attorney-General on that particular report.
