Deputy National Director of A Rocha Ghana, Daryl Bosu, has strongly condemned what he described as a shameful and unlawful act by individuals believed to be operatives of Ghana’s National Security, who forcibly shut down the Forestry Commission’s Bekwai District Office on Monday morning.
According to eyewitness accounts and confirmations from Forestry officials, a group of 15 to 20 masked men, armed and dressed in plain clothes, stormed the Bekwai office around 8:30 AM, locked it with their own padlocks, and confiscated the official keys. The men, who arrived in a pickup and a Land Cruiser, refused to identify themselves but claimed to be acting on “orders from above.”
Daryl Bosu, who took to social media to express his outrage, called the incident an attack on Ghana’s forest governance institutions and questioned the legal authority under which the operatives acted.“This is shameful. What authority does the National Security have when it comes to the affairs of the Forestry Commission?” Bosu asked in a public statement. “We cannot protect Ghana’s forests while institutions mandated to do so are being locked up by unknown armed men.”
The motive for the alleged raid remains unclear, but Forestry officials suspect it may be linked to recent arrests of illegal miners operating within the Oda River Forest Reserve, an area under the jurisdiction of the Bekwai District Office. Officials who led the arrest operations had reportedly received threats in the days leading up to the incident.
Unconfirmed reports indicate that Forestry offices in Offinso and Nkawie were also targeted around the same time, pointing to what may have been a coordinated action.“The timing is suspect. Just days ago, our officers apprehended illegal miners in a protected forest reserve. Now, we are being locked out by masked men? This cannot be a coincidence,” a Forestry official noted.
Daryl Bosu has since called on the President, the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, and key law enforcement agencies to investigate the incident urgently.“This culture of intimidation must stop. If these were truly state operatives, the public deserves to know who sent them, under what legal authority, and for what purpose,” he said.
