President Nkrumah Would Never Have Planned To Set Up An Integrated Aluminium Industry In 1960s Ghana - If He Had Had The Slightest Inkling That In 2017 Global Climate Would Threaten His Beloved Mother Ghana

It is such a pity that Flt. Lt. J. J. Rawlings did not realise the environmental disaster  that would eventually befall Mother Ghana, when his regime was bamboozled by canny World Bank officials, and went ahead to agree to permit surface gold mining  mining in this country, in the 1980s.

With the benefit of hindsight, that clearly cynical and self-serving advice from the World Bank to the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) military regime in the early 80s, for the then governme to allow foreign investors to engage in surface gold mining in Ghana, was criminal and a glaring crime against humanity case.

Furthermore, it ought to be pointed out that all the governments which since then allowed that abomination  to continue,  are complicit in that egregious environmental crime.

And it beggers belief that today, some of our political leaders apparently think it is terribly clever to allow forests to be destroyed by surface mining companies. It illustrates perfectly how bereft of creative nation-building ideas they actually are.

The question is: Is it not curious that some politicians in Ghana today, actually think that forests that could anchor community-based ecotourism, and attract tens of millions of visitors to Ghana annually, and earn our country tens of billions of dollars - monies that will remain in Ghana incidentally, whiles creating jobs galore for our younger generations - should be done away with so that  well-connected Chinese mining companies will come and mine bauxite here for export to China? Amazing.

The question then  is: How many of our nation's politicians are even aware that last year, 2016, Thailand made a staggering U.S.$72 billion from the 31 million visitors it hosted that year? What has Thailand got by way of tourist attractions that Ghana does not have, I ask?

And, most outrageous of all, is that pure nonsense about tearing down the Atewa upland evegreen rainforest to mine bauxite, so that Ghana can finally develop an  integrated aluminium industry, at a time when global climate change is impacting Ghana negatively. Amazing.

At this juncture, the point ought to be made that one day, all those super-clever politicians will regret ever taking part in the daft decision to go ahead with such short-term rent-seeking dubious industralisation  plans, cloaked as creative nation-building.

And, although one is not a betting man one's self, as sure as day follows night, future generations will curse all of those genuises without exception, for allowing that needless and preventable catastrophe (especially when God Almighty stopped President Nkrumah from going ahead to do so by allowing his overthrow in 1966), before he could implement that particular economic policy of his Convention People's Party (CPP) government.

Finally, the irony in all this, is that precisely because he was such a fantastic  lateral thinker, President Nkrumah would never have gone ahead to create a vertically integrated aluminium industry in our country, if he had had the slightest inkling in the 1960s that global climate change would threaten his beloved Mother Ghana in 2017. Pity