Narcotics, power and politics in Ghana

Last week, was a wild one in Ghana by all standards as details of Ms. Nayele Ametefeh’s attempt to smuggle from Accra, Ghana into the United Kingdom; 12.5 kilogrammes of cocaine, with a street value of $5 million, came in, thick and fast.

News of the 32-year-old Ghanaian national, Nayele, originally born Ruby Adu-Gyamfi, who was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport, a most secure airport in the world with such a heavy consignment of narcotics, spread like savanna bushfire. Accounts of how she used the VIP lounge of the Kotoka International Airport in Accra, escaping the sagacious eyes of Ghana’s security agencies, shocked the nation and the diplomatic world, warranting a statement from the British High Commission in Ghana to correct what they described as an erroneous impression put out by the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB).

It was followed by an intense free-for-all commentary on the airwaves. Ruby appeared in a UK court last Thursday and pleaded guilty to charges of smuggling narcotics into that country. She is scheduled to reappear for sentencing next January. Ordinarily that should bring closure to the matter.

But it is not so simple, when it is about narcotics. Former UN Secretary-General, Javier Pérez De Cuéllar, at the 17th Special Session of the General Assembly, held on the 20th of February, 1990 said "…Let us resolve that at this special session of the General Assembly, words lead to action and that this action leads to success. Drug abuse is a time bomb ticking away in the heart of our civilization. We must now find measures to deal with it before it explodes and destroys us."

Clearly our words in Ghana, have not led to action that would lead to success in the fight against drug trafficking and abuse. Why the British Authorities made such a big catch without informing their Ghanaian counterparts in Operation Westbridge, the Ghana UK collaboration to fight drug smuggling, leaves many more questions than answers.

Why Ghana’s Minister of the Interior, the overall head of Ghana’s security agencies including narcotics control, thinks he should keep his job after such a serious breach of national security at a strategic facility such as the VIP lounge of our only international airport is highly questionable.

Second, why the Minister of Foreign Affairs who has overall responsibility for the VIP and VVIP lounges think she can give an account of what happened in a radio interview and continue to keep her job is surprising. In Renssalaer Lee’s book The White Labyrinth - Cocaine and Political Power, he warns that “Cocaine traffickers have bought into the political system, and can successfully manipulate key institutions, the press, police, military and judiciary”. Democracy is said to be expensive and until we find a better system of political governance, we just have to live with it.

But should that caveat prevent me from asking for the implementation of article 55(14) of the 1992 constitution which requires political parties to publicly disclose their audited accounts? Why should the high income country UK, cap their campaign spending at £32,000,00 the equivalent of GHC 200,000.00 and Ghana, a doubtful lower level middle income country allow a blank cheque for parliamentary candidates who spend as much as GHC 1 Million to win elections to represent constituencies that lack water, electricity and toilets?

Apart from the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), none of the political parties that contested in the 2012 general elections have complied with the requirements of campaign finance reporting. Now that both NDC and NPP activists have mentioned names of some of their leading members as benefiting from donations made by known and alleged drug barons can we say that cocaine money has not entered our politics?

How much did the NDC and NPP spend on their 2012 election campaigns? Where did they get all that money? Are we safe?