Regarding his posture in the fight against galamsey, President Nana Akufo-Addo has been branded a "big liar" by the President of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Prof Eric Abavare.

“That man is a big liar," Prof Abavare told Joy News on Thursday, 12 September 2024, adding: "I am sad because I have to say this on air."

"Once upon a time, when issues of Prof Frimpong Boateng, the former Minister of Environment, was seizing people's excavators, the president made us believe he was doing the wrong thing, but today I believe him,” Prof Abavare explained.

In Prof Abavare's view, the president can stop galamsey once and for all if he so wished.

"Nana Addo has all the powers to stop galamsey if he wants to. The point is that he doesn’t want to," Prof Abavare noted.

"He [Akufo-Addo] has all it takes to stop galamsey now," Prof Abavare insisted, noting: "If they are not willing to solve the problem, they must not be in office." 

"They must resign. I call for the resignation of the president for his massive failure to fight galamsey,” he said.

He also criticised former President John Mahama for promising to release galamsey criminals should he have won the 2020 presidential election.

"He doesn’t even qualify to be the president of Ghana. This issue of galamsey, we know the solution. We know those involved. We know what we can do to solve it. The issue is that we don’t want to do it. If the [current] president [Akufo-Addo] really wants to solve it, he will say that from now on he does not want to see any earthmoving machine on our road anywhere. That statement alone will suffice everything,” Prof Abavare said.