Resetting Ghana Into A Cocaine Coast

The New Patriotic Party’s press statement, delivered at their headquarters in Accra yesterday, makes for grim reading. And whether you wear red, green, or no colour at all, one fact is difficult to swallow: in under eighteen months, this country has recorded twelve major narcotics busts linked to Ghana, with a combined street value exceeding one billion US dollars.

That is not a statistic. That is a national emergency.

What struck us most was not simply the volume of cocaine moving through our ports and airports. It was the pattern. From gari sacks to charcoal containers to plastic waste, drug cartels have learned to hide their poison inside the very products that carry the Ghanaian name across the world.

They have studied our systems, identified our weak spots, and decided that Ghana is open for business. That is a verdict on the state of our port and airport security, and this government must answer for it.

The NPP’s claim that a Tema Port commander due for retirement was handed a contract extension while the seizures kept piling up deserves a direct answer from the Presidency. So does the allegation that an individual on the presidential security detail has been linked to the Dunkirk seizure. These are serious questions. They cannot be answered with tea invitations or press briefings. They demand a public inquiry with subpoena power and witnesses under oath.

The governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) will likely dismiss this statement as partisan noise. But a billion dollars of cocaine is not partisan. Innocent Ghanaian travellers being pulled aside for extra screening in every international airport is not partisan.

The stigma now attached to our exporters and our food brands is not partisan. And the damage done to young Ghanaians who consume what does not leave our shores is not partisan either.

We note the NPP’s call for the recall of Parliament and a bipartisan committee sitting in public. We support it. Ghanaians deserve more than task forces and ultimatums. They deserve sworn testimony, shipping documents, and prosecutions that reach beyond the couriers to the financiers and the officials who made this possible.

President Mahama promised a 24-hour economy. What many Ghanaians see today is a 24-hour cocaine corridor. That is a bitter irony, and his government must own it.

If this administration has nothing to hide, it has nothing to fear from an open inquiry. The country is watching. And the world is watching too