NPP/NDC narcotic war “very shameful” – Kwesi Jonah

The raging war of words between the two main political parties over which one of them is more of a narcotic-friendly party than the other is “very shameful” and must be stopped, a Senior Fellow of governance Think Tank, Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG), Kwesi Jonah has told Bernard Nasara Saibu on Starr Today.

“…What every patriotic Ghanaian expect the parties to be competing in is how to move this country forward, not how each other has been encouraging or associated with drug barons and so on and so forth.

“This is shameful and they should stop it… I don’t understand why they are engaged in this very very shameful game,” Kwesi Jonah said Wednesday.

The narcotic war of words resurfaced on Wednesday after the General Secretary of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, told Journalists at a press conference at the party’s headquarters in Accra that the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) rather than the NDC, is more likely to have aided a Ghanaian-Austrian citizen by name Nayele Ametefeh to traffick 12kgs of cocaine from Accra’s Kotoka International Airport to UK’s Heathrow Airport in London, late last year.

She is alleged to have had access to the VIP lounge of the West African country’s Airport and also confessed to the Isleworth Crown Court where she was prosecuted that she has always had the protection of big politicians since 2004.

Ametefeh has been jailed 8 years in the UK.

At Wednesday’s press conference, General Mosquito, as Asiedu Nketia is popularly known, said the NPP’s history as a party whose members have been involved in drug trafficking is more likely to have been complicit in the Ametefeh saga.

His comments prompted an immediate response from the Director of Communication of the NPP, Nana Akomea, who accused the NDC of “desperately” attempting to absolve itself of complicity in the Ametefeh saga.

Jonah, however, told Bernard Nasara Saibu that the attempts by both parties to ascribe narcotic complicity to the other will not have any impact on either party’s electoral fortunes as the country goes to the polls in 2016.

“It does not work…they should stop trying to discredit the other party in the eyes of the genuine voters by trying to associate [them with drugs],” Jonah said.