NPP Wild Over Cocaine Ruby

Nayele Ametefe aka Ruby Adu-Gyamfi
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has cited President John Mahama and his ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) for complicity in the infamous Ruby cocaine scandal.

It came a day after the lady at the centre of the scandal, Nayele Ametefe aka Ruby Adu-Gyamfi, was convicted by the Isleworth Crown Court in the UK on her own plea of attempting to smuggle over 12kg of cocaine into that country through the Heathrow Airport where she was busted.

She was consequently sentenced to eight years and eight months' imprisonment.

Interestingly, on the day of Ruby's conviction, a member of the NDC, one Peter Oti, stormed the court clad in the party's colours as if to give a tacit party support.

In a statement issued in Accra yesterday, Communications Director of the NPP, Nana Akomea, noted that 'By the same standard, the massive lapses, omissions and commissions in the Nayele Ametefe scandal, at the very least, by the NDC's own standard in opposition, makes President Mahama's NDC government complicit in this Nayele Ametefe cocaine scandal.'

This, he said, was evident in the fact that lawyer for the convicted drug baroness claimed that his client was aided by powerful people back home in Ghana.

That revelation alone, the NPP said, raises a lot of pertinent questions, some of which include how Ms Ametefe was able to access the VVIP/Presidential transit lounge at the Kotoka International Airport and how she was able to carry over 12kg of cocaine in her hand luggage through the  VVIP/Presidential transit lounge.

They could equally not comprehend what gave her the confidence to carry that amount of cocaine in her hand luggage through Heathrow Airport as she did at the Kotoka International Airport.

The statement also sought to know why she was arrested by the British Border Agency on the aircraft and not allowed to disembark and whether the British Border control suspected that she was not going to pass through the airport.

'Is it mere coincidence that there was a Ghana High Commission diplomatic car on the tarmac to pick someone? 'Why the seeming confusion in government over bits of the story: NACOB, a government agency asserted that it was in the know about the arrest, only to be flatly debunked by the British authorities; Why the Attorney General's charge sheet alluding to her transit through the VVIP/Presidential lounge, only to be reaffirmed that she indeed travelled through the VVIP/Presidential transit lounge?' the NPP queried.

Nana Akomea could also not fathom why other persons who were arrested and charged by the Ghanaian government for abetment in connection with the Nayele Ametefe cocaine saga had been admitted to bail in Ghana and 'What steps would Ghana government take to ascertain the so-called powerful personalities in Ghana who were alluded in court to have supported Nayele Ametefe?'

By Charles Takyi-Boadu