Tarkwa has Gold. Bawku has a curfew; Ghana has a double standard

One question has been following me around: if the curfew that has locked Bawku for five years had been imposed on Tarkwa, would government still call it peace?

You know the answer.

For three months this country has argued about a single mining lease. Gold Fields’ Tarkwa concession expires in April 2027, and this very week the company told investors that Ghana’s silence on renewal is dragging down its valuation while posting an 81 per cent jump in half-year profit. Tarkwa pours out roughly 427,000 ounces of gold a year. Three mines in that one enclave paid GH¢5.1 billion in taxes in 2024, about 7.3 per cent of all direct domestic taxes.

So, everybody moves. The Chamber of Mines fights. The International Energy Agency fights. Former Chief Justices weigh in. The Apinto chiefs speak. The Minerals Commission sets three conditions for renewal and puts them in public. There is a technical committee, a negotiating table, a timeline.

Now come to Bawku.

Ghana knows how to defend what it values. Five years of curfew tells you exactly where Bawku sits on that list.

Five years of curfew. Ten at night to five in the morning. Okada banned outright and from yesterday grudgingly allowed 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. No national debate. No press conference. No investor roundtable. No former Chief Justice.

If Bawku Were Tarkwa, This Curfew Would Have Ended Years Ago

Why? Because policymakers have quietly decided that Bawku does not earn.

The expensive lie that Bawku is cheap

Bawku has no Gold Fields. Bawku has something Tarkwa will never have: a border.

This is the lie I am exposing. We only count what GRA collects at the mine gate. We do not count what we lose at Bawku: the fuel for 1,000 soldiers for 4 years, the customs that diverted to Togo, the onion trucks that stopped coming, the schools closed for months, the young men who left Bawku because okada closes at 6pm. Add it up, Bawku’s conflict is not cheap.

It is one of the most expensive curfews in Ghana.This is Ghana’s doorway to Burkina Faso and Togo, sitting within 45 kilometres of Bittou and Cinkassé, two of the largest border markets in the sub-region. Livestock. Onion; what our own farmers call the cocoa of Bawku. Tomatoes. Second-hand clothes. Goods that feed Bolga, Tamale, Kumasi and Accra.

And for five years, we have been paying to switch Bawku off

We pay soldiers. We pay for fuel to patrol streets where every shop is already shut around GH¢6 million a month, GH¢72 million a year. We have pledged GH¢1 billion to rebuild what the fighting broke.

Then we lose what nobody bothers to count. The roughly GH¢300,000 a month Bawku Municipal could collect from okada tolls and market fees. The trucks that now slip across at Paga and Kulungugu rather than gamble on a town that dies at sunset. The customs revenue that never arrives because the border market closes before the evening rush. The banks; GCB, ADB, SSNIT that packed up and left, taking local government’s revenue plumbing with them.

Look at the Assembly’s own books. Internally generated funds fell from GH¢981,000 in 2021 to GH¢685,000 in 2022 against a GH¢1.35 million target. By August 2023 it had realised 19 per cent of total budgeted revenue.

That is not a security statistic. It is a fiscal collapse. It sits in the Ministry of Finance’s own files, unread.”

Why are we spending millions to protect a town from earning?

The clock is now the wound

Here is what nobody in Accra seems to have noticed.

The curfew starts at 10 p.m. The okada stop at 6 p.m.

Four legal hours. Four hours no law forbids. Four hours when farmers come off the land, when the heat finally breaks, when a savannah town actually does business and we have simply abandoned them.

In Tarkwa the gold comes up 24 hours a day. In Bawku, buying gari after dark is a risk.

Nobody would tell AngloGold to mine only between six and six. They would pack and go. We say it to Bawku traders every single morning.

The conflict opened this wound. The clock is what keeps it open.

Now the objection I have to answer honestly

A security officer reading this will say: you want the night back, but the night is when they kill.

He is not wrong, and I will not pretend otherwise.

The chieftaincy question was never settled.

The capacity for violence is still live.

And the curfew has always been a ratchet driven by events, not by calendar. . Six in the evening by April. One assassination can undo a year of easing. Whoever lifts this curfew owns the next incident politically, and every minister knows it.

There is a harder truth still, and it cuts against my own argument. The motorbike is not only Bawku’s economy. In this conflict it has been the weapon platform. Drive by shootings. Snatched bikes. That is why the okada ban outlived every other measure, and why men were released from it a full month after women.

So let me be precise about what I am asking for, because precision is what has been missing from this debate.

What I am actually asking for

I am not asking government to switch off the lights and walk away. I am asking it to stop confusing a curfew with a policy.

Reopen the evening under supervision, not by decree. The 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. window is nearly worthless to lift. Almost no trade happens then. The valuable hours are 6 to 9 p.m., and they are also the risky ones. So concentrate the risk instead of dispersing it: a lit, fenced, policed trading window at Bawku Central Market from 6 to 9 p.m., with joint police-trader patrols. Guarded commerce in one place beats anonymous movement everywhere.

Register the riders. Anonymity is the security problem, not the motorbike. Numbered plates, association vetting, visible identification for anyone riding in evening hours. Give the security services a list instead of a ban.

Phase it by area, and say so. Binduri’s curfew was lifted in February this year after security improved, and it has not been reimposed not even after the April ambush. That is the proof that graduated relaxation can hold. Build on it publicly.

Publish the three conditions. Gold Fields got a technical committee, a published standard and a negotiating table. Bawku gets a monthly Executive Instrument. Tell traders and investors exactly what must be true for the curfew to end, and publish weekly incident data so everyone can watch the distance close. Even a slow lift is bankable if it is predictable.

Count Bawku like we count gold. Let the Statistical Service and the Upper East Regional Coordinating Council publish the number: lost tolls, lost customs, security spending, foregone trade. Five years in, there is still no official figure for what this has cost Ghana. That silence is not an oversight. It is the whole problem. We measure what we intend to protect.

Tarkwa proves this country knows how to fight for revenue when it can see it on a balance sheet.

A curfew renewed every month for five years is not managing risk. It is postponing a political settlement and sending traders the bill.

Ghana knows how to fight for what it values. It is time to show Bawku is valued too.