Two mystery flights at KIA vrs Chinese deportations

By now it should be clear why it is not in the national interest to appoint party loyalists as CEOs of State owned Enterprises (SOEs).

When the interest of the state clashes with that of their political party, and when the unadulterated truth is needed to expose culprits in crimes against Ghana, truth becomes unknowable, particularly when it becomes evident that the government is to blame. That is why Ghanaians have, since the return to multi-party democracy, tended to be dubious about statements issued by SOEs in times of national crises.

Take the brouhaha over the presence of two foreign-owned aircraft at Kotoka International Airport (KIA), AirMed flight N823AM and the Cavok Air Antonov An-12B, and their content thereof. Why has it been difficult to believe Ghana Airports Company’s statement announcing that its investigations “found no evidence of illegal substances on board either of the aircraft”?

Why has what was supposed to be a whistle-blowing patriotic duty by an MP turned into a full-blown political shouting bout?

Answer: The matter has been “elevated” to the level of NPP/NDC football, and the CEO happens to be an NDC loyalist.

On the other side of the coin, couldn’t the Ranking Member on Parliament’s Defence and Interior Committee, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, have just ended his whistle-blowing on a non-partisan note instead of miring it in political controversy with a categorical statement-of-fact (his fact) that the two aircraft in question were involved in transporting narcotics and cash?

What is the basis of his allegation? Why has he refused to collaborate with the security agencies appointed by the President to do the probe? Simple truth: he has no evidence, just suspicions.

Panned to the Government’s camp. Questions are being asked which are yet to be answered satisfactorily by Government. For example, asks the NPP, “Isn’t it curious that both aircraft developed faults while in Ghana?”

My counter-question to the NPP, however, is: how can we ever know the truth without a probe? What is the truth without evidence?

To my mind, the omnibus invitation by the NPP to the international community could have been narrowed to an invitation to it to nominate men or women to be part of the probe. That way, the probe report would leave no lingering doubts.

See where partisanship is landing us: nowhere, except in noise.

Today, my piece is in two parts. Part Two questions the decision of the ruling NDC to deport and not jail foreign nationals involved in illegal mining.

Less than five months ago, in January 2025, the thrice-minted President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, had occasion to remind Ghanaians that the cane that was used against Takyi would always be there to be used on Baah.

This article is to remind him of the eternal truth of that statement.

Results of the 2025 first quarter post-election poll by Global Info Analytics  released last week showed that 68% of Ghanaians blamed NPP’s heavy defeat in the 2024 elections on former President Akufo-Addo.

Only eight years before, in 2016, the same man was swept to unprecedented victory in the election that made him President of Ghana. He won by a one-million-vote difference. By the time we voted again in 2020, the sins of Akufo-Addo had halved the gap by 500,000 votes.

In 2024, the man and his party suffered the heaviest electoral defeat in Ghanaian history.

One of the sins of that regime was its decision, announced by Senior Minister Osafo Maafo in 2018, to deport rather than jail Aisha Huang, the Chinese queen of Galamsey.

So come 2025, how did it enter the mind of Mahama that the verdict of Ghanaians will be different in 2028 in the light of this deportation decision? Did he, as Baah, forget Takyi’s cane?

On April 8, this year, a radio station announced that its checks had confirmed that “foreign nationals, once deported, are handed over to law enforcement authorities in their home countries for prosecution.”

To Ghanaians who know what Galamsey has done and is doing to the environment and the people’s health, this information offers cold comfort.

Since the return of NDC, more than 100 foreign nationals, mostly Chinese citizens, have been deported for offenses related, mostly, to illegal mining.

Deportation? When Ghanaian babies are being born without limbs, some without eyes; when GWCL cannot afford the cost of treating the heavily contaminated raw water; when we are losing our forests, a nation that has started importing water?

In an interview on Joy FM, a member of government explained why the Chinese are being deported. “Our jails are overcrowded,” he said. That’s rubbing salt into our wounds. Are our prisons too overcrowded to contain Chinese but not Ghanaians?

For a government whose appointees, while in opposition, shouted loudest to crucify Osafo Maafo for announcing the Akufo-Addo government’s decision to deport Aisha Huang, it is sad that the NDC has forgotten that this is Ghanaians’ ntamkesie.

By Enimil Ashon  

Credit: myjoyonline.com

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s stance.

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