The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has said that Ghana's reputation built over generations was now being lost in a few years with cases of foreign drug seizure.
Speaking at a press conference in Accra on Wednesday (November 4, 2026), the Second National Vice Chairman of the NPP, Henry Nana Boakye, said the recurring interception of cocaine abroad which was traced to Ghana was no longer just a law enforcement problem but a national image crisis.
"Every new seizure abroad stamps the name of Ghana on another consignment of poison," he said.
Mr Boakye said between March 2025 and October 2026, the party counted no fewer than 14 major drug busts, with cocaine seized abroad alone carrying an estimated street value of between US$1.3 billion and US$1.7 billion.
The list, he indicated, runs from Amsterdam to Beirut with nearly 4,500 kilogrammes in wood from Ghana seized at Amsterdam in June 2025; 2,829kg in cassava flour from Tema seized at Antwerp in November 2025; a further 1,158 kilogramme at Antwerp in December 2025; about 3.9 tonnes in plastic waste seized at Dunkirk in September 2026, valued at about €225 million; and 46.7kg carried by a Syrian national arrested in Beirut on October 31, 2026 after flying from Accra on MEA 576.
He said it also included 320 kilogrammes of illicit drugs worth about US$210 million seized in Australia in April 2026 in charcoal shipped from Ghana, and heroin seized from a passenger who arrived in Johannesburg from Accra in September 2026.
For the NPP, Mr Boakye said, the damage was already being felt by ordinary Ghanaians pointing out that honest travellers and exporters, now faced extra suspicion at foreign airports and ports because of a trade they have nothing to do with.
"Cocaine does not travel alone. It brings guns, money laundering, corrupted officers and, in time, the violence we have watched destroy other nations on this continent and in Latin America," he cautioned.
To date, he said, "Not a single head had rolled, not at NACOC, not at Ghana Airports Company, not at Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority, not at National Security."
"Fourteen busts. billions of dollars in cocaine. Ghana's name in the headlines from Amsterdam to Beirut and yet every appointee remains at post, untouched and unbothered," he added.
Mr Boakye said the NPP linked the failure to protect the country's image to President John Mahama's own emergency response.
He explained that after the Dunkirk seizure, the President chaired an emergency security meeting on September 17, 2026 and gave an inter-agency task force two weeks to deliver a roadmap.
He said the deadline was on October 1, 2026 and five weeks later, Ghanaians have still not seen that roadmap.
The NPP also questioned how Musah Attah, known as "Kromo", one of four Ghanaians charged over the Dunkirk case, came to be photographed repeatedly within the close security cordon around President Mahama and Vice President Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, despite NACOC describing him as a farmer and not a member of any presidential security detail.
"Ghanaians are entitled to know how a man now standing trial in a €225 million cocaine case came to be so close to the nation's two highest office holders, and who gave him that access," the NPP second Vice-Chairman asked saying the NPP demands, the immediate sacking of the heads of NACOC, GACL, GPHA and National Security, subject to independent investigation, a bipartisan parliamentary inquiry with public hearings, and publication of the missing roadmap within seven days.
It also demanded publication of all diplomatic and service passports issued since January 2025, regular updates on the prosecution of "Kromo" and his co-accused, and suspension of the Tema-Cartagena direct shipping link until a security review is laid before Parliament.
