Bolga: Court remands popular Miner and Others for daylight shooting and threat to kill Chief

The Circuit Court in Bolgatanga has remanded into police custody a popular small-scale miner in the Upper East Region, Zongdan Boyak Kolog, popularly known as Polo, for his alleged involvement in various crimes, including threatening to kill a chief.

Polo was arrested together with some armed bandits whom he had reportedly hired from Bawku to help him fight and protect a mining concession in Gbane in the Talensi District of the Upper East Region. Among the six persons standing trial for their various roles in what was described as a horror encounter by onlookers who ran for their lives in a daylight sporadic shooting in the bustling mining community of Gbane is Baba-Yaro Zumah, a self-acclaimed anti-corruption fighter in Bolgatanga. The others are Atta Yin-mason, Yussif Mbelma-trader, Moro Razak, also a trader, and Belba Abdulai, an unemployed resident of Bawku. The court remanded into police custody Polo and three of the accused persons.

The Facts as Presented by Police Prosecutors:

According to police prosecutors, Zongdan Boyak Kolog, aka Polo, mobilized the other suspects and transported them to the mining site to warn some town folks who are currently mining in an area he claims as his concession. In what appears to be a stern warning to not only the young men working at the site at the time of his visit, Polo extended his warning to the Chief of the area, Naba Zoarezug Tiibaalug Kumbangkpem, whom he suspected had given approval for natives of the town to mine in the concession.

Prosecutors told the court that Polo threatened to shoot and kill anyone he found on the concession, including beheading the Chief and Tindaana of the area if they dared step foot on the litigated concession. The threat was reaffirmed by suspect Baba-Yaro Zumah, who had accompanied Polo on that mission.

It further emerged in court that on January 26, 2025, the suspects, who on this occasion were armed, returned to Gbane ostensibly to carry through their threat. Prosecutors further told the court that the suspects fired gunshots sporadically from a Range Rover SUV, which they were driving, to the hearing of the town folks, who had to abandon their businesses and run for cover.

The firing of the gunshots by Polo and his gang from the speeding Range Rover SUV reportedly caused injuries to one of the suspects, who was eventually rushed to the hospital upon their arrest by the police.

How Regional Police Commander skillfully Arrested the suspects:

Contained in the brief facts presented by prosecutors to the court was an incredible narration of how the Upper East Regional Police Commander, DCOP Raymond Adofiem, personally sped off in his official vehicle to effect the arrest of the gang.

It emerged that the suspects were trailed by the police from Gbane, where they had caused some public fear and pandemonium by firing gunshots in what seemed like a daylight robbery attack. A team of dispatched police officers, in an attempt to arrest the suspects, closed a police barricade at BOST in Bolgatanga to stop the Range Rover SUV being driven by Polo and his allies. In a daring fashion, the suspects refused to stop and rammed through the barricade with their vehicle. A shocked Regional Police Commander, upon receiving the latest report from his men on the ground, hurriedly drove his vehicle and blocked a section of the main Tamale-Bolgatanga Road around the police headquarters to fish out the vehicle containing the suspects. They were arrested, and a search conducted in the vehicle led to the retrieval of one MOSSBERG Pump Action Rifle and one NP22 Foreign Pistol with 45 live rounds of 9mm ammunitions.

In all, five charges were slapped on the suspects, which include Threat of Death, Possession of Firearms and Ammunitions without Authority, Discharging Guns in Town, Disturbing Public Peace, and Resisting Arrest and Rescue.

This latest criminal trial involving the popular small-scale miner follows one in 2022 where he, together with six others, were arrested and arraigned before the High Court in Bolgatanga for their alleged involvement in the death of two individuals who were branded as witches at Yameriga in the Talensi District in the Upper East Region.

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