Did Foreign Intelligence Bug Kofi Boakye?

The leadership of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) is singing a song that is harmonious to it but discordant to the Georgina Wood Committee and the Ghanaian public at large, intelligence experts have said.

Colonel Isaac Akuako (Rtd), the Executive Secretary of (NACOB), now on leave, on Tuesday said he had no knowledge about how the "ACP Kofi Boakye Tape" came into the custody of his outfit.

The substance of Col. Akuako's claims was essentially the same as that of his subordinate, Mr. Ben Ndego, Head of Operations of NACOB, when the latter appeared before the Wood's Committee last week.

The failure of both Col. Akuako and Ndego, to reveal the source of the "Kofi Boakye tape" to the Georgina Wood Committee is probably the beginning of a wild goose chase.

In the absence of any clues of the secret recorders, could it be that one of the reputable international intelligence agencies such as the M15 of United Kingdom, the FBI or CIA of the United States or the KGB of Russia did the recording? Or is it our own Bureau of National Investigations (BNI)?

Testifying before the Committee investigating the disappearance of 77 parcels of cocaine from a shipping vessel, MV Benjamin in Tema, Col. Akuako said the tape was dropped in the offices of NACOB from an intelligence source.

He said the tape came to NACOB through the operations people and he cannot put a finger on the person, who drew his attention to the recording when it came to NACOB.

"As to who dropped it, I have no idea and I cannot not put a finger as to who drew my attention to the tape in the office," he said. Col Akuoko said NACOB is an intelligence unit which depends on intelligence to perform its function. "These intelligence information come in from so many sources include drops and letters in all forms."

He said in this particular case the intelligence source was in the form of a drop and so he did not know who was behind the recording and how the recording was done.

It would be recalled that when he took his turn before the Committee, Mr. Ndego disclosed that he collected the tape from NACOB's intelligence officers upon the directive of his boss, Col. Akuoko, which he in turn handed over to the Executive Director of the Food and Drugs Board (FDB), Mr. Emmanuel Agyarko.

Agyarko did not only fail to name the particular officer who handed him the tape he also could not tell how it came into the custody of NACOB.

The tape that has been described as the " mother of all recordings" was recorded during the meeting held between the Director-General of Operations of the Ghana Police Service, ACP Kofi Boakye, and four others at the former's residence to discuss the loss of 77 parcels of narcotic drugs from a vessel, MV Benjamin in Tema, in April this year.

The contents of the tape and the background noise that it captured give a strong indication that ACP Boakye's residence was bugged before the recording of the meeting between the police chief and his "friends".

When ACP Boakye himself appeared before the Committee he confessed that he was unaware of the original source of the tape although he did not dismiss the possibility that the meeting was tape-recorded.

Seen by many as the man who holds the magic wand to unravel the original source of the mysterious tape, Mr. Ndego's tight-lip posture has made the already complicated matter an impossible riddle for the Committee to solve.