EDITORIAL: Ghana Under a Cocaine Induced Haze

This week the Justice Georgina Wood Commission, set up to investigate the prevalence and influence of the narcotics trade in Ghana, will round up its work. It is expected to deliver its report and a series of recommendations in the coming days. It has focussed much of its attention on the possible complicity and/or corruption of public servants in the police force and the government. Having held a litany of public hearings over the past 3 months, before which more than 30 people have testified, the Commission is ready to share its findings.

Recently, the Commission was addressed by Mr Kofi Bentum Quanson, Ghana's former drug Tsar, who outlined the seriousness of Ghana's drug trafficking problem. He pointed out that, the first people the drug Barons target are the politicians, without whose support, their trade cannot survive. Quanson says, "If we are not careful, we can end being like Colombia or places like that". Many people believe this is a watershed moment in Ghana's struggle against the twin pillars of narcotics and corruption.

This scandal has its roots in two seemingly unrelated drug cases. The first, the confiscation by police forces of a huge consignment of cocaine discovered on board a ship, the MV Benjamin, in July this year, from which 77 packets of the cocaine went missing. The second case is that of Grace Asibi, the 23 year old girlfriend of a fugitive Colombian drug dealer. Ms Asibi, who has turned State's witness, claims that she was instructed to payoff two senior police officials with US$ 200 000.

The two ensuing investigations uncovered far more than they had initially intended. More importantly they began to make substantive connections between the two cases. This suggested that a complex and coordinated network structure with strong influence within the police force and the government might exist. This connection was made real by the "Kofi Boakye Tape", where the second highest ranking police official in Ghana, Assistant Commissioner of Police, of the same name, was recorded in conversation with alleged drug dealers. The discussion is said to have centred on how they would dispose of the drugs stolen from MV Benjamin. These developments and strong suspicions that many other top officials are involved, has caused outrage in the streets of Ghana and people are demanding answers. To this point 5 individuals have been arrested and are awaiting trial, the assets of 15 other individuals and companies have been frozen, while numerous investigations are ongoing.

If it wasn't clear before that Ghana is becoming a major centre for in the global narcotics trade, it is now. There have been ample warnings signs in the past two years, which in isolation may have seemed incidental, but collectively should have caused concern. Most famously in January of 2004, four Europeans, an American and a Ghanaian were arrested for possession of nearly 700kgs of cocaine discovered in a concealed wall cavity in a house in one of the suburbs in Accra. Following a protracted and error ridden judicial process the accused were all convicted and sentenced to twenty years in prison. That case though, successful in the end, highlighted the grave shortcomings of Ghana's Narcotics Control Board (Nacob) as infighting, judicial incompetence and suspicions of manipulation all threatened to derail the prosecution.

Earlier this year, in June, the Chief State Attorney, Eric Agbolosu was fired from his post for ordering the release of two Venezuelans suspected of involvement in another drug bust, this time in the Accra suburb of East Legon. Agbolosu had no authority to issue such an order and there was more than the suggestion that the Chief State Attorney had been materially compromised. Moreover countless Ghanaians have been arrested on charges of drug smuggling, particularly into the United Kingdom. To underline this, one need only note that Eric Amoateng, a member of Ghana's Parliament sits in an American jail on charges of drug smuggling.

The weeks and months ahead promise further revelations. The report is likely to be a damning one, in which even the executive will not be spared. All the same, the government will have to ensure the effective prosecution of the perpetrators and more importantly show that it intends to implement the recommendations of the Commission. In the meanwhile the burden is on President John Kufuor to ensure that this crisis does not paralyse his government.