By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 28, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
Starrfmonline.com is reporting the British High Commissioner in Ghana to be saying that when she was arrested by border security personnel at London's Heathrow Airport, on Nov. 10, 2014, Ms. Nayele Ametefe was not holding a Ghanaian diplomatic passport. Now, that may make President John Dramani Mahama and his minions of cabinet appointees feel good about themselves, but, of course, whether Ms. Ametefe (aka Ruby Adu-Gyamfi) was in possession of a diplomatic passport at the time of her earth-quakening arrest or not is totally beside the point. And the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) cannot wholly escape blame for Ms. Ametefe's act of criminality, even as Mr. Jon Benjamin, the British High Commissioner to Ghana, has pointed out time and again, following the globally scandalous arrest of Ms. Ametefe.
As of this writing, the suspect had reportedly pleaded guilty before a Crown judge in Metropolitan London. She has also, reportedly, made a passionate appeal to the judge to speed up her sentencing; which means that when Ms. Ametefe reappears before the judge on Jan. 5, 2015, she will be looking foward to serving anywhere from 10 to 15 years in the slammer. And this is where all emphases ought to be placed. And just why is Ms. Ametefe, who has been widely alleged to be romantically linked to Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, the immediate younger half-brother of Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama, pleading earnestly to be allowed to avoid a lengthy trial by being immediately sentenced to a prison term?
Already, President Mahama has been reported to have told Ghanaians in a televised address, or interview, that both his government and the people of Ghana have learned some hard and meaningful lessons from the Ametefe Affair, otherwise known as Nayelegate. As to what lessons, I have yet to find out and discuss the same with my readers. What is clear, though, is that Ms. Ametefe was allowed by some airport security personnel to illegally use the VIP Lounge at Ghana's Kotoka International Airport (KIA), with certain knowledge that the convicted drug baroness had no diplomatic appointment with the Ghana government.
Indeed, the question of whether Ms. Ametefe was traveling on a diplomatic passport at the time of her arrest was never central to the Nayelegate contretemps. It was the ability of the criminal suspect to literally ride roughshod over the entire security apparatus at KIA that constituted the crux of the matter. And as of this writing, several members of the KIA security system had reportedly been picked up for questioning by the country's Bureau of National Investigation (BNI), with a couple of them having already been cleared of any wrongdoing and being asked to resume their posts.
At least one deputy director with the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is reported to have been arrested in connection with the Ametefe scandal. And so, undoubtedly, this is a high profile case of a glaring intersection between politics and illegal drug-trafficking. We highlight this fact because yours truly, as well as several other media operatives, has been sharply criticized for "politicizing" a clear case of cross-party criminality. The irony here, though, is that Nayelegate is inescapably political as well as a legal issue. I also don't know why some Mahama cabinet appointees seem to prefer to focus on the red-herring question of whether Ms. Ametefe was traveling on a Ghanaian diplomatic passport, instead of discussing ways and means of beefing up the obviously dysfunctional security system at the KIA.
Indeed, the extent to which influence peddling facilitated Nayelegate also needs to be thoroughly investigated, in particular with due reference to the widely alleged romantic liaison between Ms. Ametefe and Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, founding proprietor of Engineers & Planners, the mining concern that has come under heavy strafing in recent months for indulging in shady banking deals with the flagrant complicity of President John Dramani Mahama.
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