Jatikay Centre demands security shake-up and independent audit over narcotics cases

The Jatikay Centre for Human Security and Peace Building has called on President John Dramani Mahama to consider changing key officers responsible for Ghana’s security and cargo-control chain following a series of large-scale narcotics consignments linked to the country.

The Centre said the move, together with an independent vulnerability assessment of the relevant systems, would help restore public confidence and address serious weaknesses that may have emerged in the country’s border, port and cargo-control architecture.

“As an immediate confidence-building measure, we call on the President to consider changing the key officers responsible for the various stages of the security and cargo-control chain and subjecting the relevant systems to an independent vulnerability assessment,” the Centre said in a statement dated September 15, 2026.

It stressed that the call should not be interpreted as an allegation of wrongdoing against any individual but as a necessary step to ensure fresh leadership in areas where serious vulnerabilities may have emerged.

The Jatikay Centre welcomed the President’s decision to convene the country’s security, intelligence, narcotics-control, customs, port and other relevant stakeholders to respond to the growing concerns.

However, it said the scale and frequency of the narcotics cases required more than arrests and seizures, raising questions about Ghana’s intelligence, border-control and port-security systems.

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The Centre said the pattern also raised concerns about whether those responsible for anticipating and disrupting such threats had been sufficiently proactive.

It said the President’s intervention was necessary but questioned how such a serious pattern could have developed without earlier decisive action from the national security coordination architecture.

The Centre particularly criticised the failure of the National Security Coordinator to anticipate the threat, arguing that the security apparatus appeared to be responding only after multiple major international seizures.

It further urged authorities to ensure that investigations go beyond couriers to identify the financiers, facilitators, compromised insiders and international criminal networks behind the consignments.

“This is no longer simply a narcotics-control issue. It is a national security and institutional integrity challenge,” the Centre said, warning that Ghana could not afford to become a logistics hub for transnational organised crime.

Read the statement below

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