The 2nd Vice National Chairman of the opposition New Patriotic Party, Henry Nana Boakye, widely known as Nana B, has accused the government of treating illicit drug activities with kid gloves, warning that Ghana is fast becoming a corridor for international cocaine trafficking. Addressing journalists in Accra and in a follow-up statement, Nana B described the government’s reaction to a series of seizures connected to Ghana as feeble and disappointing. He argued that although the President had promised to deal firmly with those behind the trade, he had instead chosen to protect them. He said about nine officials ought to have been sacked for failing to stop the movement of narcotics through the country’s security and port systems, adding that the situation had become a stain on Ghana’s global image.
Nana B said the party had tracked 14 major drug seizures between March 2025 and October 2026, with an estimated street value of between US$1.3 billion and US$1.7 billion. He explained that seven of the seizures took place in Ghana and involved roughly 3.6 tonnes of cocaine, while five seizures abroad accounted for about 14 tonnes. Among the cases he mentioned were nearly 4,500 kilogrammes of cocaine hidden in a wood shipment from Ghana uncovered at the port of Amsterdam in June 2025, 2,829 kilogrammes found in cassava flour shipped from Tema to Antwerp in November 2025, and a further 1,158 kilogrammes seized at the same port in December 2025. He also cited 320 kilogrammes of drugs concealed in charcoal shipped from Ghana to Australia in April 2026, the arrest of a South African man with heroin at OR Tambo Airport in Johannesburg after arriving from Accra in September 2026, and the arrest in Beirut on October 31, 2026, of a Syrian national who had travelled from Ghana and was allegedly caught with 46.7 kilogrammes of cocaine. The most talked-about case remains the interception of nearly 3.9 tonnes of cocaine, valued at about €225 million, at France’s Port of Dunkirk in September 2026, where the drugs were reportedly hidden in a container declared as plastic waste shipped from Ghana.
To support his argument, Nana B revisited the Nayele Ametefe affair from President Mahama’s first term in office. Ametefe, also called Ruby Adu Gyamfi, was arrested at Heathrow Airport in London in November 2014 with about 12.5 kilogrammes of cocaine after passing through the VVIP section at Kotoka International Airport, and was later convicted and jailed for eight years and eight months by a British court. Nana B said Ghanaians had not forgotten that disgrace, and claimed the same pattern had returned under Mahama’s second term, only worse. He further alleged that secret drug-processing plants were operating in Ghana, although he offered no proof to back that particular claim.The NPP is now calling for an immediate parliamentary probe into the seizures and the circumstances under which narcotics are moving through Ghana. The government, on its part, has maintained that investigations are underway and that steps are being taken to tighten security controls at the ports and borders. The Narcotics Control Commission has also announced arrests in connection with the Dunkirk consignment. The claims made by Nana B remain allegations and have not been proven in court, and those arrested in connection with the shipments are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
