A court in Accra has sentenced Bernard Antwi Boasiako, a regional chairman of Ghana’s opposition New Patriotic Party, to 20 years in prison for unlicensed mining in the country’s Samreboi concession.In recent years, the area has been massively degraded by illegal mining, known locally as “galamsey,” damaging remaining wildlife habitat, destroying farmland, and altering natural drainage patterns.Civil society hopes the conviction of a prominent politician signals that political cover allowing illegal mining will now be reined in.
ACCRA — In a landmark ruling, the Accra High Court has sentenced Bernard Antwi Boasiako, a regional chairman of the opposition New Patriotic Party, to 20 years in prison for facilitating unlicensed mining in the Samreboi concession.
The concession is in Ghana’s Western Region, in the Upper Guinean Forest Belt that extends across the subregion from Togo and Ghana in the east to Guinea in the west. The concession is set in the remains of the belt’s tropical rainforest.
While large parts of the landscape at Samreboi have been logged and converted to cocoa plantations or other farmland in recent decades, significant tracts of natural forest remain, including the nearby Tano Nimiri and Aboi forest reserves.
