On behalf of the National Executive Committee of the New Patriotic Party, I welcome you to this press engagement. We meet at a sad and dangerous moment in our country's history.

Under the watch of President John Dramani Mahama and his NDC government, Ghana is no longer merely at risk of becoming a hub for international drug trafficking; the evidence before us shows we have arrived. Ghana has become a Cocaine Coast, and this Government must own that shame and quickly find a solution to this mess.

Intelligence gathered by the New Patriotic Party indicates that Ghana's troubles run deeper than a string of unfortunate seizures. Our information is that our country has become a major transit point for narcotics not by accident, but because of the complicity of officials at our ports and our airports who have compromised the very checkpoints meant to protect this nation.

Worse still, we are reliably informed that clandestine laboratories are operating within our borders, processing narcotics for export. That is the reason the volumes of drugs traced to Ghana keep surfacing in the holds of ships and the luggage of passengers in Sydney, Dunkirk, and Johannesburg, because the processing is happening here, at home, under this Government's watch.

We have been here before. Ghanaians have not forgotten the Nayele Ametefe scandal under the first Mahama administration, when a suspected drug trafficker was allegedly afforded the courtesy of the VVIP wing at Kotoka International Airport before her arrest at Heathrow with cocaine in her luggage, an episode that dragged our country's name through international disgrace. We said then that official complicity had a name and a pattern. Today, under a second Mahama term, that same pattern has returned, and it has grown worse.

Ladies and Gentlemen, just this past Sunday, reports reaching this Party indicate no fewer than four major drug interceptions connected to Ghana, some within our borders, others involving Ghanaians and Ghana-linked consignments intercepted abroad. This is not an isolated embarrassment. It is a pattern, and patterns demand accountability.

We would have thought that a president confronted with this scale of national disgrace would move immediately to relieve of their duties every official in the chain of command who has failed this country. Instead, Mr. President invites them to a meeting for tea. Ghanaians did not vote for a government that responds to a cocaine crisis with courtesy calls. They voted for leadership that protects this nation's borders and this nation's name.These are not allegations. These are confirmed arrests, seizures, and international intercepts linked to Ghana:Within Ghana - Major Seizures:

March 4, 2025, Pedu Junction, Cape Coast: The National Intelligence Bureau intercepted a tipper truck travelling from the Western Region to Accra carrying 3,319.66 kilograms, over 3.3 tonnes, of cocaine concealed under heaps of sand. Estimated street value: US$350 million. One of the largest cocaine seizures in Ghana's history.

March 2025, Takoradi-Cape Coast Highway: A second truck was stopped on the same corridor carrying approximately 120 slabs of cocaine valued at an estimated US$150 million. Together with the Pedu Junction bust, Ghana intercepted approximately 4.5 tonnes of cocaine within weeks.

March 2025, Kotoka International Airport: Allegations emerged that two aircraft, AirMed Flight NH23AM and a Cavok Air Antonov AN-12B, landed at KIA from Gran Canaria, Spain, allegedly carrying narcotics and undeclared US currency. The NPP Minority has cited this as a serious lapse in aviation security oversight that demands investigation.

April 23, 2025: Swissport Cargo Terminal, KIA: NACOC officers intercepted 73 slabs of cocaine weighing 89.74 kilograms hidden inside three wooden boxes declared as containing traditional artefacts, destined for the Netherlands. Four suspects were arrested, including an artefact dealer and freight forwarding employees.

July 2025: MV Sankofa Vessel Case: The NPP Minority raised concerns that the MV Sankofa, a vessel sailing under a forged flag, was released by the Ghana Maritime Authority after paying only part of a nearly GH¢12 million fine. This raises serious questions about whether enforcement actions are being compromised.

February 2026: Kotoka International Airport: A senior manager of a manufacturing company was arrested at KIA after allegedly concealing cocaine inside packaged gari meant for export. NACOC confirmed this was one of approximately four separate food product concealment attempts involving Ghanaian branded food exports.

August 2026: Tema Harbour, Tema: 866 parcels of suspected cocaine were seized, concealed in sacks of gari at a warehouse within the Tema Harbour enclave. London was identified as the intended destination.Internationally, Shipments Traced Back to Ghana:

Netherlands interception, 2025: Approximately 250 kilograms of cocaine were intercepted in the Netherlands after being shipped from Ghana concealed within branded Ghanaian food products.

Belgium: December 4, 2025: A Ghana-Belgium joint investigation identified 1.158 tonnes of suspected cocaine destined for the Port of Antwerp.

Australia, April 2026, Port Botany, Sydney: Australian Border Force intercepted 320 kilograms of methamphetamine concealed in containers of charcoal shipped from Ghana, one of Australia's largest-ever methamphetamine seizures. Estimated street value: US$208 million (approximately A$296 million). Three people were arrested in Australia including a British actress. NACOC investigations in Ghana followed.

France, September 7, 2026, Port of Dunkirk: French customs seized 167 packages containing nearly 3.9 tonnes of cocaine concealed in plastic waste inside a shipping container originating from Ghana. Estimated value: approximately €225 million (US$261.45 million). Three suspects were subsequently arrested in Ghana. NACOC confirmed the case links to Dutch fugitive Jas Jakan Anj, also known as "By Jo."

South Africa, September 2026: A man was arrested with $123,000 worth of heroin after arriving on a flight from Accra to Johannesburg.The total estimated street value of major narcotics seizures linked to Ghana between 2025 and September 2026 exceeds US$1 billion. In less than two years. The pattern is unmistakable: Ghana is being used as a transit hub

The methods are becoming increasingly sophisticated:• Sand in tipper trucks• Artefact boxes shipped as cargo• Packaged gari and branded Ghanaian food products• Plastic waste containers• Charcoal shipments• Passenger luggage on international flights• Private aircraft landing at KIAWhen drug cartels are using the diversity of Ghana's legitimate export economy as a cover, from gari to charcoal to artefacts to plastic waste, it means they have studied our systems, identified our weaknesses, and concluded that Ghana is open for business as a drug transit point. That is a verdict on the state of our port and airport security. And this government must answer for it.• After the March 2025 Pedu Junction seizure of US$350 million in cocaine, what systemic changes were made to road cargo security?• After the April 2025 KIA cargo seizure, what new screening protocols were introduced at the Swissport terminal?• After the Australia methamphetamine seizure in April 2026, what specific intelligence-sharing arrangements were formalised with Australian Federal Police?• After each of these incidents, what happened to the investigations? How many have resulted in completed prosecutions with custodial sentences?

Ghanaians deserve an answer to a simple question: why is Tema Port, the most strategic port in this country, the gateway through which the bulk of our trade passes, being commanded today by an officer who has already reached the end of his service? This officer was due for retirement.

Rather than allow him to go home with his gratuity and his dignity, this government reached for a contract extension and kept him exactly where he is. And the record since his posting in February 2026 speaks for itself: it is under this command that Tema has earned the reputation of a corridor for cocaine.

So we are entitled to ask what, precisely, is being rewarded here. When a port descends into a narcotics highway on an officer's watch, the ordinary response of a serious government is to remove that officer, not to renew him. The President must therefore tell Ghanaians why he went ahead to extend the contract of a man whose tenure at Tema has coincided with the most damaging drug scandals in our recent history.

Is it competence? The evidence says otherwise. Or is it proximity, is this extension explained by his family relationship to the finance minister? Because if merit did not earn this extension, then something else did, and Ghanaians have a right to know what. You cannot stand before the cameras in the morning declaring war on drugs and in the evening reward inefficiency with an extension.

Let this government come and give us an innocent explanation. If it cannot, then the conclusion is unavoidable: the retention of this officer is no administrative accident; it is a deliberate arrangement, and this government is complicit in what is passing through Tema Port.

Mr. President, by the New Patriotic Party's count, this NDC government has now presided over twelve high-value cocaine and narcotics busts linked to Ghana in under eighteen months in office. Twelve. That is not bad luck. That is a national embarrassment, and it is a direct indictment of the security architecture your government is responsible for.Ladies and Gentlemen, we cannot ignore the disturbing questions raised by the arrest of one Musah Atta, linked to the Dunkirk seizure, who, pictorial and video evidence available to us shows, had at various points been part of the presidential and vice-presidential security detail. How does an individual with that level of proximity to the Presidency end up linked to a four-tonne cocaine shipment?

Did he use that access to compromise our security infrastructure? Is there any connection between people close to the seat of power and this trade? Mr. President, these questions cannot be swept under the carpet.

Accordingly, the New Patriotic Party supports the Minority’s call for the immediate recall of Parliament. A matter of this magnitude, consignments of cocaine valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars moving through Ghanaian ports and Ghanaian airspace, and this country's name appearing in the charge sheets of foreign jurisdictions, cannot wait for the convenience of the parliamentary calendar.

Parliament is the one institution constitutionally mandated to hold the Executive to account on behalf of the people of Ghana, and it cannot discharge that mandate while it stands adjourned and the scandal grows by the week. We therefore call on the Speaker to recall the House without delay, and we call for the establishment of a special bipartisan committee, drawn from both sides of the aisle, with full powers to summon witnesses, compel the production of documents and sit in public session, to conduct a comprehensive inquiry into the drug seizures linked to Ghana.

We insist that this committee sit in public, and we insist on that deliberately. Ghanaians have been given press conferences, task forces and ultimatums; what they have not been given is a single sworn word on the record.

An in-house investigation by the very administration whose appointees superintend these ports will convince nobody and will settle nothing. Let the officers come. Let the agencies come.

Let the appointing authority explain its appointments. If this government has nothing to hide, it has nothing to fear from a bipartisan committee sitting in the open, and it should welcome this call rather than resist it. Anything short of that is not an investigation; it is a cover-up conducted in slow motion.

We have also watched with concern what looks like a calculated attempt to distract Ghanaians from this crisis through the arrest and remand of Salomey Awiti Baffoe, a senior nursing officer and mother of three from Techiman, over her alleged connection to the "Ghana Jollof" account, even as the Ghana Police Service's own record of who operates that account has shifted from one name to another.

We stand with Salomey and her family, and we say plainly: a police media campaign over a social media account will not silence this Party's questions about cocaine leaving this country by the tonne.

Mr. President, you promised Ghanaians a 24-Hour Economy. You did not promise them 24-Hour Cocaine Trafficking. Remind Ghanaians, if you can, how a government elected on the promise of jobs and prosperity has instead delivered a country whose name now triggers extra searches, extra suspicion, and extra humiliation for every innocent Ghanaian traveller at every airport in the world.

Ghanaian exporters are now treated with suspicion abroad. Ghanaian travellers now carry a stigma they did not create. And a portion of every consignment that does not make it out of the country stays right here, to poison our own young people.In light of all this, the New Patriotic Party demands:

An immediate parliamentary inquiry● The immediate recall of Parliament and the establishment of a special bipartisan committee to conduct a public inquiry into the drug seizures linked to Ghana.● Parliament to exercise its powers under Article 103(6) of the 1992 Constitution to compel the production of shipping documents, inspection records and clearance decisions.

The immediate removal of institutional heads and the ministers they report to● The Ag. Director-General, Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority● The Director-General, Ghana Maritime Authority● The Chief Executive Officer, Ghana Shippers' Authority● The Director-General, Narcotics Control Commission● National Security Coordinator● Director-General, National Intelligence Bureau● The Managing Director, Ghana Airports Company Limited● The Commissioner-General, Customs Division● The Inspector-General of Police, Ghana Police Service

Full accountability, not just couriers● A full public account of the financiers and organisers behind every one of these twelve seizures, not merely the low-level suspects paraded before the cameras.

A transparent probe into official complicity● A time-bound investigation into the extent of official complicity, including any connection between individuals with access to the Presidency and this trade, with findings published, not buried.

Mr President, Ghana's reputation belongs to the people of this country, not to your government's comfort. The world is watching, our partners are watching, and Ghanaians are watching. We will not relent until Ghana is taken off this cocaine map, and until every official who compromised our ports, our airports, and our borders is held to account.Thank you. God bless our homeland Ghana.