UK, Canada deny issuing terror alerts - Kan Dapaah

Both the UK High Commission and Canadian Embassy in Ghana have denied issuing any new travel or terror alerts warning their citizens against travelling to Ghana over looming terrorist attacks, Minister of National Security, Mr Albert Kan-Dapaah has told Class91.3FM.

There were media reports on Thursday that the Canadian and the UK governments had issued the alerts through their mission in Accra.

But Mr Kan-Dapaah told Class91.3FM’s Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) host Moro Awudu on Friday, 4 August 2017 that: “This is only a travel advice that the western countries have been known to issue to their citizens".

"The one that is on the website today that has caused all this panic is not something that was planted yesterday or this week, certainly not this month, or this year; it’s been there for years. The same advice word for word, so I don’t really know what has changed.”

He continued: “Indeed, one of them simply says that: ‘Ghana has not experienced any terrorist attack in the past but there have been terrorist attacks in some neighbouring countries, and, therefore, it is possible that there can be an attack in Ghana’. This is the advice and I don’t really find anything alarming in that sort of advice, especially when it is not a new one but has been there for a number of years. So, I don’t see why we should be panicking about this.”

Mr Kan-Dapaah said both the UK High Commission and the Canadian Embassy, have expressed shock at the local media reports.

He told Moro Awudu: “I want to affirm that there is no known terrorist threat to this country. If there was any such known terrorist threat made known to our partners, we have a very good partnership with the United States, we have very good partnership with UK and with France. If there was any such thing, I will be the first person to be informed.

“I have not been informed of any such thing. On the contrary, I did talk to the acting British High Commissioner yesterday, he was shocked, he was surprised and he didn’t know why this should become a cause for panic in our country".

"I talked to the person in charge of security at the Canadian Embassy, she also was surprised, and, in fact, if I can quote her, she called it ‘media mischief’, so please there is nothing like that, there is no known threat.”