Malor Must Remember Coke-Toting Mr. Benneh and Ms. Ametefe

In the wake of the diplomatic faux-pas reportedly committed by Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo, Ghana’s Senior Minister, on the Aisha Huang Affair, in which a legally resident Chinese woman demimonde and Galamsey operative incarcerated and awaiting judicial trial and sentencing was deported back to China, recently, many calls have gone out, largely by parliamentary opposition leaders and virulent New Patriotic Party (NPP) critics, for the former Finance and Sports Minister in the erstwhile John Agyekum-Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party to be promptly fired. In the latest of such calls, Mr. Dotsei Malor, who abruptly resigned his high-profile post as former President John Dramani Mahama’s Communications Advisor because, at the time, Mr. Malor claimed that Mr. Mahama had largely ignored the very advice and role for which he had been hired, has added the weight of his voice, for whatever it may be worth, to such calls (See “Ex-Communications Advisor to Mahama Jabs Osafo-Maafo Over Galamsey Gaffe” Modernghana.com 4/21/19).

Now, it constitutes the very height of hypocrisy for these NDC operatives and staunch backers and sympathizers to so casually assume that Ghanaians have so soon forgotten the diplomatic negotiations that went on behind the scenes between the Jerry John Rawlings-led government of the National Democratic Congress that led to the release of the cocaine- or heroin-toting NDC hack by the name of Mr. Benneh, who was faced with certain prosecution and a long prison sentence with hard labor in Germany, after Mr. Benneh had been arrested by German aviation authorities for using his diplomatic suitcase or bag to smuggle drugs into that Central-European country. In other words, if, in the words of the UN-employed Mr. Malor, the law in Ghana does not seem to have worked in the Aisha Huang Affair, it was all because Chairman Jerry John Rawlings set the precedent of the preemptive abortion of the rule of law and order in the country some twenty years ago. In short, the Senior Minister’s only gaffe, if any at all, was to have frankly, albeit rather naively, revealed what really went on behind the scenes at very high diplomatic levels between the governments of Ghana and China.

Indeed, if the law really worked during the governance of our country by the National Democratic Congress, Mr. Malor’s own former boss would not have imported the two Saudi-born Yemeni terror suspects into the country on the blind side of Parliament, only to have Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa vehemently defend such gross act of political criminality on the dubious grounds that these two decade-long incarcerated Guantanamo Bay terror suspects were, in fact, no criminals at all but exemplarily peaceful people who had been wrongfully incarcerated by operatives of the Obama Administration. It did not seem to bother Mr. Ablakwa that although Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay was only 90 miles from the State of Florida, on mainland USA, Congress would not permit these “innocent victims” to get within even the humongous travel-space of 50 miles near Continental United States.

As well, Mr. Malor’s citation of the very scandalous case of Mr. Eric Amoateng, the former New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Nkoranza-North, in the former Brong-Ahafo Region, is akin to a proverbial comparison between apples and oranges, in terms of the relative political statures between Ghana and the United States. Indeed, had Mr. Amoateng been of Chinese or Israeli citizenship or nationality, for example, you can bet your proverbial bottom-dollar that the sort of negotiations that presumably went on behind the scenes between Ghana and China on the Aisha Huang Affair would definitely have happened on behalf of the disgraced NPP-MP as well; and Mr. Amoateng would likely not have spent more than a couple of months or even weeks behind bars.

About the closest comparison to the Amoateng Case, is the Mahama- and National Democratic Congress-sponsored “Cocaine Lady Case” that that landed Ms. Nayele Ametefe or Ms. Ruby Adu-Gyamfi in a London jailhouse for 8 years and 8 months (See Sahara Reporters 1/6/15). We also know that Ms. Ametefe or Adu-Gyamfi was sponsored by the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress because the criminal convict used the VVIP-Lounge at the Kotoka International Airport to fly out her drug consignment. We also know that the cocaine courier who had, reportedly, been followed for several years by some leading Western intelligence agency sleuths, including the United States, Australia and Britain, had also been escorted onto her plane or flight by a government-salaried national security agent. We simply cannot have the leaders of the National Democratic Congress living by a different set of laws with impunity, while the leaders of the New Patriotic Party obey the laws of our land like everybody else. Now, let us talk about more progressive issues and leave the Senior Minister alone.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
April 21, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]