2 mystery flights @ KIA vs Chinese deportations
By now, it should be clear why it is not in the national interest to appoint party loyalists as CEOs of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs).
When the interest of the state clashes with that of their political party, and when the unadulterated truth is needed to expose culprits in crimes against Ghana, truth becomes unknowable.
That is why Ghanaians have, since the return to multi-party democracy, tended to be dubious about statements issued by SOEs in times of national crises.
Otherwise, dear reader, why has the presence of two foreign-owned aircraft at Kotoka airport, AirMed flight N823AM and the Cavok Air Antonov An-12B, and their contents thereof, remained unexplainable after two weeks?
Why has what was supposed to be a whistle-blowing patriotic duty by an MP turned into a full-blown political shouting bout?
Why should it be difficult to believe a Ghana Airports Company Limited statement announcing that its investigations “found no evidence of illegal substances on board either of the aircraft”?
Answer: the matter has been “elevated” to the level of NPP/NDC football, and the CEO is an NDC loyalist.
On the other side of the coin, couldn’t the Ranking Member on Parliament’s Defence and Interior Committee, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, have just ended his whistle-blowing on a non-partisan note, instead of miring it in political controversy with a categorical statement-of-fact (his fact) that the two aircraft in question were involved in transporting narcotics and cash?
What is the basis of his allegation? Why has he refused to collaborate with the security agencies appointed by the President to do the probe?
Simple truth: he has no evidence! Just suspicions?
Pan to the government’s camp. Questions are being asked which are yet to be answered satisfactorily.
For example, asks the New Patriotic Party (NPP), “Isn’t it curious that both aircraft developed faults while in Ghana?”
My counter-question to the NPP, however, is: how can we ever know the truth without a probe? What is the truth without evidence?
To my mind, the omnibus invitation by the NPP to the international community could have been narrowed to an invitation to it to nominate men or women to be part of the probe.
That way, the probe report will leave no lingering doubts.
See where partisanship is landing us: nowhere, except in noise.
Decision
Today, my piece is in two parts. Part two questions the decision of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) to deport and not jail foreign nationals involved in illegal mining.
Less than five months ago, in January 2025, the thrice-minted President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, had occasion to remind Ghanaians that the cane that was used against Takyi would always be there to be used on Baah.
This article is to remind him of the eternal truth of that statement.
Results of the 2025 first quarter post-election poll by Global Info Analytics released last week showed that 68 per cent of Ghanaians blamed NPP’s heavy defeat in the 2024 elections on former President Akufo-Addo.
Only eight years before, in 2016, the same man was swept to unprecedented victory in the election that made him President of Ghana. He won by one million votes difference. By the time we voted again in 2020, the sins of Akufo-Addo had halved the gap by 500,000 votes.
In 2024, the man and his party suffered the heaviest electoral defeat in Ghanaian history.
One of the sins of that regime was its decision, announced by Senior Minister Osafo Maafo in 2018, to deport rather than jail Aisha Huang, the Chinese queen of Galamsey.
So, come 2025, how did it enter the mind of Mahama that the verdict of Ghanaians will be different in 2028 in the light of this deportation decision? Did he, as Baah, forget Takyi’s cane?
On April 8 this year, Citi News announced that its checks had confirmed that “foreign nationals, once deported, are handed over to law enforcement authorities in their home countries for prosecution.”
To Ghanaians, who know what galamsey has done and is doing to the environment and the people’s health, this information offers cold comfort.
Since the return of NDC, more than 100 foreign nationals, mostly Chinese citizens, have been deported for offences related mostly to illegal mining.
Deportation?
When Ghanaian babies are being born without limbs, some without eyes; when Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) cannot afford the cost of treating the heavily contaminated raw water; when we are losing our forests; a nation that has started importing water?
In an interview on Joy Fm, a government official explained why the Chinese were being deported. “Our jails are overcrowded,” he said.
That’s rubbing salt into our wounds. Are our prisons too overcrowded to contain Chinese and not Ghanaians?
For a government whose appointees, while in opposition, shouted loudest to crucify Osafo Maafo for announcing Akufo-Addo government’s decision to deport Aisha Huang, it is sad that the NDC has forgotten that this is Ghanaians’ ntamkesie.
The writer is the Executive Director,
Centre for Communication and Culture.
E-mail: ashonenimil@gmail.com
