A petition has gone to Ghana’s Inspector-General of Police, Christian Tetteh Yohuno, not only revealing some strange things the Upper East Regional Police Commander, DCOP Raymond Wejong Ali Adofiem, is said to have done but also calling for a thorough investigation into the same.
The two-page document, dated 5th June 2025, was composed and lodged by lawyers from the Kulendi @ Law Maalo Chambers, a highly reputable firm based in the national capital, Accra.
Several residents of the region as well as some security observers who have sighted copies of the petition await the IGP’s response, hoping it will rehabilitate the corporate image of the Ghana Police Service in the region which, in their views, has become more hopelessly dented under Adofiem’s administration.
The second paragraph of the petition is where the main content begins.
It highlights how Zongdan Boyak Kolog, a small-scale gold miner who is better known as Polo and is also a client to the lawyers, complained to the Upper East Regional Police Command in 2023 that a Chinese-owned mining company had encroached on his concession at Gban, a community in Talensi.
That Chinese company, named Earl International Group (Ghana) Gold Limited, operates in the same district. It used to be called Shaanxi Mining Ghana Limited, the firm that rose to unwanted prominence in 2019, a few months after a 2018 earth-shattering bribery scandal, when a midnight explosion from its mine killed 16 Ghanaians all at once.
Although it was temporarily shut down and punished with a $40,000 fine by the state for the explosion without prosecution and compensation for the victims’ families, Shaanxi still has the blood of the 16 young men on its hands in the memories of millions to this day, even after shedding its name.
When Polo reported the encroachment, the police advised him to file a suit against the company. Following the advice, he went to High Court ‘2’ in the region’s capital, Bolgatanga, instituting Suit Number UE/BG/HC2/C1/06/2023 against the Asian company and Ghana’s Minerals Commission.
He also added three individuals— Thomas Wuni Duanab, Elijah Nab Pardnyuun and Pardzie Nab— to the suit as defendants. Duanab was the District Chief Executive (DCE) of Talensi between October 2021 and January 2025. Pardnyuun is the sub-divisional chief of Gban. And Pardzie is the chief’s younger brother. He is widely known in the district as Commando.
Interlocutory Injunction
Polo sought an interlocutory injunction order from the court restraining the defendants and their associates from eating into his concession and it was granted on Thursday, 23 February 2023.
Later, he filed an application for contempt through his lawyers against the defendants for reportedly flouting the injunction order. But the court could not determine the contempt application as the judge, Justice Alexander Graham, suddenly fled the region after he came under a violent attack at his Bolgatanga residence from some unidentified persons on Wednesday, 15 March 2023.
The attack happened five days after the judge was celebrated nationwide— and beyond— for convicting two men who were sent to the court by the Paramount Chief of Talensi, Tongraan Kugbilsong Nanlebegtang, to invite him to his palace for a discussion about some High Court ‘2’ cases involving some parties from Talensi.
While the two men— the Tongraan’s secretary, Richard Sunday Yinbil, and the Chief of Baare, Naab Nyarkora Mantii— shook in the dock in a criminal trial for contempt of court on Friday, 10 March 2023, the furious judge asked them to produce the Tongraan himself before him for prosecution.
But the Tongraan, who is widely believed to be backing the sued Chinese mining company against Polo’s business interest, survived the heat with his ‘fingers burnt’ through a joint plea from about 12 lawyers who coincidentally were in that courtroom that morning for different matters.
A Letter to the Ministry of Defence
In the fifth paragraph of the petition, Polo’s lawyers told the IGP that the regional police commander did not restrain the encroachers from the concession despite Polo showing a copy of the court injunction order to him and he did not offer the miner the necessary protection to work there.
They said the commander’s posture compelled Polo to lodge a petition dated 17th February 2025 with the IGP’s office but the effort did not yield any results.
The lawyers said they subsequently wrote to the Ministry of Defence, requesting military assistance because the police had declined to help. A portion of that letter highlighted fears that some foreigners from Burkina Faso had infiltrated the concession, working together with some indigenous encroachers and using the proceeds accrued from the goldfield to fund violent extremism (terrorism) in West Africa.
The defence ministry wrote back, notifying the lawyers that the government had directed all mining companies in Ghana, following a decision cabinet took in 2018, to engage the services of private security companies instead of relying on the military for security assistance.
Polo, according to the petition, engaged Sherlock Security Bureau, a private security firm, to protect his concession from the encroachers. Then, he introduced the private security company to the commander through a letter dated 2nd August 2024 from his lawyers.
“It is fascinating and intriguing to know that the Upper East Regional Commander refused to allow the privately engaged security to man our client’s concession,” they decried in the petition.
Arrested, Assaulted and Arraigned
The lawyers further revealed that as Polo incessantly complained about his ordeal, the regional commander recently invited him to a meeting.
During the meeting, he proposed to help Polo reach an agreement with the encroachers. Polo agreed, saying he was prepared to bring the encroachers on board his firm, Nanlamtaaba Enterprise, as legal miners and share the proceeds gathered from the concession with them by a mutual agreement.
Subsequent to that meeting, the commander got back in touch with Polo with a message that the encroachers had agreed to legally work with him. The petition disclosed that on Saturday, 31 May 2025, Polo went to the site in the company of some police officers detailed by the regional commander. Polo’s mission was to officially register the encroachers as part of his concession as agreed.
But as the registration efforts progressed, the regional commander dispatched some police officers to physically assault Polo’s representatives at the site without reason, according to that petition. Polo was not at the site at the time of the assault, according to the lawyers, but he was later arrested on Wednesday, 4 June 2025. He was also detained and denied bail without charge.
The assaulted representatives, 8 in number, were subsequently put on trial at a circuit court in Bolgatanga on Monday, 2 June 2025, granted bail the same day and told to reappear on Monday, 16 June 2025.
The lawyers quoted Polo in their petition to have said the development clearly was a setup rooted in malice, unlawful powers the commander arrogated to himself and an abuse of the office entrusted to him by the state.
“We also hasten to observe that Mr [Adofiem’s] actions as Regional Police Commander smack of the utmost bad faith. In contravention of his lawful duties he rather supports illegal miners against legitimate concession owners.
“His action against our client is anything but lawful. He lured our client to the concession and then turned around to arrest him without cause. We are also informed that the Police seized a legitimately registered pump action gun and unlawfully planted an AK 47 rifle pretending to have found same on the representatives of our client,” the lawyers said.
They added: “We request, respectfully, that you retrieve the serial number on the weapon and conduct further search on same.”
Alleged Reasons Behind Commander’s Actions
Many residents of the region believe that the regional commander, who started on a fair and firm footing after he assumed office in 2023, has turned into a weapon being used by the Chinese company and some traditional chiefs to fight Polo and to torment him.
But the lawyers have another declaration.
They have pointed out in the twelfth paragraph of their petition that the regional commander “is on a hunting spree to cage our client at all costs as a result of the prior petition which our client filed against him in respect of a similar incident where Mr [Adofiem] assaulted our client by asking him to kneel on the ground and slapping him thereafter.”
“Our client is reliably informed that the regional police commander, Mr [Adofiem] has vowed to make our client’s life a living hell because of the petition under reference. Mr [Adofiem] is exploiting his position in the police service to abuse our client by unlawfully subjecting him to much harassment and brutality. Rather than serve the cause of justice he is rather absolved in using his position as regional commander to carry out his personal vendettas.
“It is now widespread news in the Bolgatanga Township that Mr [Adofiem] has planned again to by way of ambush take our client to the concession under the guise of investigations while instigating persons to attack our client on the concession. It is his further plan to abandon our client at the site at the mercy of these attackers,” the lawyers asserted.
They summed up their petition by stating that the regional commander had no regard for legal processes and respect for the rule of law.
“He refuses to comply with the clear injunction orders of the High Court, Bolgatanga. We have cause to also believe that he is heavily compromised by our client’s opponents. Without your timely intervention, we fear the fate of our client in view of the foregoing misconduct of the Upper East Regional Commander.
“Consequently, we respectfully implore you, to launch full investigations into the activities of the Upper East Regional Police Commander and bring same to book. Counting on your usual sense of professionalism,” they concluded.
Polo, after his arrest on June 4, was remanded on June 5 by High Court ‘1’ in Bolgatanga for two weeks. He is due to appear in court on June 18. He is currently in police cells in Bolgatanga.
After he was arrested and remanded last week, some reporters who support the Chinese company and its allies aired and published reports from a press conference said to have been organised and sponsored by his detractors and their allies to paint him as a criminal and a public enemy. Sources say the detractors want him jailed at all costs so they can take over his concession.
Selective Justice?
Polo, like his fellow small-scale miner Charles Taleog Ndanbon of Yenyeya Mining Company, has been facing troubles from some foreign and local interested parties for refusing to surrender his legally acquired and licensed concession.
The regional command is facing another wave of public criticism for failing to prosecute Commando (mentioned earlier), who brandished firearms and publicly fired eleven shots from a pistol in Talensi, but acting at the speed of light’ to charge Polo with possession of a firearm and abetment of crime and prosecute him.One of the video clips captures Commando shooting eleven times into the air.
Commando openly donated two motorbikes in 2022 to the regional police command after firing the gunshots. He is in the Chinese company’s camp and, just like his nephew, Ibrahim Awudu who proudly calls himself Gold Baron, is also one of Polo’s bitter opponents.
While the public has been waiting for months to see the regional commander (Adofiem) prosecute Commando after two video clips were made available in evidence to the command early this year, the whole regional police headquarters has remained in awkward silence on that matter.
Some residents were set to hold a press conference against the regional commander at Fonky Grand Hotel in Bolgatanga at 3:00 p.m. Ghana time on Sunday, 8 June 2025. But two police officers entered the hall where the news conference was due to take place before the residents and the invited media houses arrived.
The residents said they identified one of the men as an officer from the Upper East Regional Police Command. They said the other man was wearing dreadlocks and suspected he came from a police training centre in Nabdam, a district in the region.
The organisers cancelled the event immediately for two reasons. They felt intimidated by the presence of the uninvited policemen. They also feared the officers might have been sent to plant some weapons in the hall to set them up the same way they believed it happened to Polo before his arrest.
On Monday, 9 June 2025, Media Without Borders contacted the regional commander for his response to the petition the lawyers lodged with the IGP. This writer also forwarded a copy of the petition to him on WhatsApp. He requested a direct interview at his office but he was not available when the author of this report was ready to meet him up.
This author further contacted him the following day via WhatsApp, informing him that he (the author) was out of the region and suggesting that he channel his comments on the matter by phone. He did not respond after reading that message.
Once again, this writer asked him on Wednesday, 11 June 2025, if he would like to give his side of the story by phone or in a face-to-face interview with the author’s representative. He went for the second option but gave no answer after he was asked when he would be available for the interview and informed that the representative was ready to meet with him. There has been no response from him from Monday to Thursday (today).
Source: Edward Adeti/Media Without Borders/mwbonline.org
