The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has said that anyone who treats the forests, rivers and vegetation with careless abandon does not love Ghana. The President is also firmly convinced that extracting the minerals Ghana has been blessed with should not lead to the destruction of forests and rivers.
“We cannot claim to love Ghana when we treat with such disdain and total careless abandon, the forests, the rivers, the vegetation, the creatures and the soils that make up Ghana,” he said.
President Akufo-Addo said this on Wednesday in Koforidua, Eastern Region, where he gave a message to mark Ghana’s 67th Independence Anniversary Celebration.
The celebration and his address are the last for him, as the President of the Republic, having done so since 2017.
According to the President, the Almighty has been kind and generous to Ghana and the beautiful land deserves to be treated with tender, loving care.
His concern was that future generations would not recognise the Ghana they read about unless citizens change how they treat the land.
ECONOMIC FORTUNES
President Akufo-Addo again acknowledged that the nation faced difficult economic problems, but was happy that the situation was gradually retuning to normalcy.
He, however, mentioned that two projects coming on stream should make a great difference to the economic fortunes of the country.
He referred to the selection of strategic partners to work with the Ghana Integrated Aluminium Development Corporation (GIADEC) to build a new alumina refinery.
They will also develop mines at Nyinahin-Mpasaaso, as three of four projects being executed under the Integrated Aluminium Industry (IAI) project.
The President witnessed the signing of two separate agreements in Accra recently. The first was between GIADEC, a wholly-owned public entity and Rocksure International as a strategic partner to develop a mine at Nyinahin-Mpassaso.
The second was between GIADEC and Mytilineos SA, a leading global industrial and energy company, which entails the development of a second mine at Nyinahin-Mpasaaso and the establishment of a refinery.
With these signings, President Akufo-Addo said Ghana was finally ending decades of exporting raw bauxite from the country.
He added that “we shall now refine bauxite, mined in Ghana, to produce alumina that will feed the VALCO smelter and the downstream aluminium industry…”
The other major project President Akufo-Addo mentioned was the Ada Songhor Salt Project, spearheaded by Electrochem Salt Mine Ltd. The project has come about after many years of disputes, which prevented the exploitation of salt at the site.
Ostensibly, work has finally started and salt will be mined on a large commercial scale, the president noted.
While stating the support the government was providing flood victims in parts of the Volta Region, President Akufo-Addo said the government would stop at nothing to restore normalcy to the lives and livelihoods of all affected persons.
DEMOCRACY
On the 67th Independence Anniversary celebration, which was on the theme “our democracy, our pride,” President Akufo-Addo said not every country could make such a claim.
According to him, the democratic system of government in Ghana was not bequeathed to the nation by the British, adding that there “is no democracy in colonial rule.”
He said that though Ghana, in the past 31 years, has been stable democratically, it has not got a perfect system but has improved with every past election.
“We still have a lot more to learn, especially when it comes to the tolerance of opposing views. But we also know that we dare not relapse, as there are many examples of countries that have disintegrated into chaos as a result of disputed elections,” he said.
The President of Cote d’Ivoire, Alassanne Quattara, was the Special Guest of Honour, whose remarks preceded the address of President Akufo-Addo.
CELEBRATION
Since 2019, President Akufo-Addo has rotated the celebration of Independence Day in the country, the first President to embark on such a move.
The celebration was held in Tamale in 2019, Kumasi in 2021, Cape Coast in 2022, Ho in 2023 and Koforidua in 2024.
