Illegal miners rack up GHC3.5 million in unpaid electricity bills, threaten to kill ECG staff

Illegal miners at the RMG Apinto concession in Prestea Huni-Valley have accumulated nearly GHC3.5 million in unpaid electricity bills as of August 2025, The Fourth Estate has uncovered.

Their last payment to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) was on July 23, 2025—just GHC 150,000.

The bills are ballooning despite assurances from the MP for the area, Robert Wisdom Cudjoe, who promised the ECG that the illegal miners would settle their debts after the National Security seized the concession from RMG Mining and handed it over to an NDC-aligned group.

Although the ECG has reported the matter to the police, no action has been taken against the illegal miners who are being led by a National Democratic Congress activist, Ebenezer Amemagakpor, alias Commander or Aboyanga.

The ECG staff say the group has threatened to shoot and kill them if they attempt to cut power to the site. The high-tension poles connecting the mine are now guarded by the same group controlling the mine.

“We sent our staff to disconnect them because we have not given them permission to reconnect,” a source at the ECG head office in Accra told The Fourth Estate.

“When we went there to disconnect them, they came after us with thugs. They threatened us that if we tried to disconnect them, they would shoot us.”

Party officials in the constituency defend the MP’s involvement as a justified attempt to restore the concession to its rightful owners, who they claim were deprived of the mine by the Akufo-Addo administration.

Background

The Fourth Estate on September 9, 2025, published a story that drew attention to how National Security stormed a licensed small-scale mining site in the Prestea Huni-Valley municipality in March this year, driving away the owners and taking over the site.

The site was subsequently handed over to persons believed to be associated with the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) for illegal mining/galamsey. This group of illegal miners is led by Ebenezer Amemagakpor, alias Commander or Aboyanga, a known NDC activist who also runs a gold-buying agency, known as Nyame Tease. After the takeover of the site, which operates using high-voltage/high-power-consuming pumps, the legitimate mine owners, RMG Mining Limited, reported the matter to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and asked for power to be disconnected to the mine to avoid the accumulation of bills in RMG’s name.

ECG disconnected power to the site, but for a totally different reason. It claimed RMG hadn’t paid its bills, which at the time stood at GHC 1.1 million

NDC MP for the Prestea Huni-Valley, Robert Wisdom Cudjoe, wrote to ECG to request for reconnection to enable what was illegal mining to continue

He told ECG that national security had tasked him to oversee the mine until the resolution of a supposed conflict over the ownership mine.

“I wish to bring to your attention that there was a recent dispute between two mining contractors over the ownership of the concession, which required the intervention of national security. Following their directive, I have been tasked with overseeing the site until an amicable resolution is reached,” Mr. Cudjoe’s letter to the ECG said.

In the letter, the MP described the site in question as a community mine site. But at the time of his letter, the government, under John Mahama, had banned all community mining, and so there couldn’t have been a community mine site.

As the unpaid bills pile up, RMG has written several letters to the ECG asking it to disconnect power to the site, but ECG officials told The Fourth Estate that they would not risk the lives of their employees

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