Former Minister for Environment, Science and Technology, Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, has submitted a 37-page report to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo detailing the activities of the dissolved Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM) and the challenges faced in the fight against illegal mining. The report contains allegations against several government and political party officials who attempted to hinder the committee’s efforts, including Information Minister, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, whom Frimpong-Boateng accused of conspiring to bring him down.
According to the report, Oppong-Nkrumah allegedly convened a meeting with a group of journalists from both NDC and NPP-affiliated media houses at the Forest Hotel in Dodowa on February 8, 2020, to strategize on how to undermine Frimpong-Boateng. The former minister claimed that a journalist from among the group informed him of the plot and advised him to watch out for negative headlines in some newspapers in the following days. The report stated that various stories were subsequently published in the media against Frimpong-Boateng, and the Minister for Information also sought to discredit him during cabinet meetings.
Frimpong-Boateng further alleged that some members of the IMCIM, including Oppong-Nkrumah, sabotaged his work. He accused the Information Minister of never reaching out to him to ascertain the truth about the so-called “missing excavators,” but instead chose to magnify the issue in the press and present falsehoods before cabinet for reasons best known to him and his co-conspirators. The former minister suggested that Oppong-Nkrumah and his associates had presidential ambitions and were attempting to destroy his reputation, a hardworking patriot committed to achieving a Ghana Beyond Aid.
In 2020, President Akufo-Addo removed Frimpong-Boateng from office, and the former minister claimed that his exit was a grand scheme orchestrated by some elements in the government and the New Patriotic Party. He suggested that there were people in government who wanted him out because of his stance on illegal mining activities in the country.
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