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08.12.2014 Editorial

Outstanding Question

By Daily Guide
Outstanding Question
08.12.2014 LISTEN

In a country where the coca plant is not endemic, let alone the production of its principal derivative—the notorious cocaine narcotic—it is surprising how so much of it could land on the laps of Ruby Adu Gyamfi and eventually land at the Heathrow Airport in London.

Could she have played a role in its entry into Ghana?

Amazingly, questions about how the record quantity of cocaine came into the country from its source in South America or so, have hardly been posed.

Here is therefore prompting a national conversation about how the stuff came into the country and the degree of the facilitation of officialdom (if any) in that direction.

We have heard about a conjecture that it could have been smuggled through the facilitation of officialdom as it did in the case of the outward movement of the stuff to the waiting arms of drug barons in the UK underworld and the eventual turkey-suffering end users in the alleys and druggy districts of European cities and beyond.

It would appear that the entry of narcotic substances hardly suffers the somewhat rigorous checks reserved for persons arriving in the country from coca and poppy producing parts of the world, more so when VVIP treatment awaits those bearing them.

Ruby could have enjoyed exceptional courtesies—those reserved for Very Very Important Personalities (VVIP)—with unlimited state power at her disposal at both the entry and departure points. Evidences of these are manifest in the ease and impunity with which she carried out her druggy business.

Ruby was a special kettle of fish, a Jezebel, exempt from the routine checks reserved for those with no link to wielders of political power.

Drug enforcement agents elsewhere, not Ghana, should be envious of their British counterparts over the trove of fine yet fresh details about cocaine, especially its purported linkage with officialdom in a country like Ghana.

Above all, the knowledge about how such quantities of narcotic stuff manage to enter our airspace and eventually land at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) eluding the so-called checks at the entry port would make a fantastic entry in the literature on drug smuggling in Ghana.

Smuggling of narcotics into the country rarely makes the headline as opposed to the outside movement of the stuff. This for us, especially in relation to the Ruby saga, should attract our attention at this stage.

We think that such a study, if you like, would open an important chapter in the compendium of narcotics in Ghana. Unless someone wants to tell us that contrary to what is held to be true, coca is planted here on our blind side and the derivative processed locally. That is far from being the truth.

The verity or otherwise of the use of the VVIP by Ruby is as important as how the stuff was brought into the country. Somebody in officialdom knows something we are being denied knowledge of. This too is part of the crux of the matter.

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