Afenyo-Markin accuses government of diverting attention from Ghana’s drug trafficking concerns

The Minority Leader in Ghana's Parliament, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, has accused the government of using political distractions and high-profile arrests to divert public attention away from the country's rising drug trafficking issue. In his speech at the launch of the 30th Ghana Journalists Association Media Awards, Afenyo-Markin called on the government to focus on locating those responsible for major narcotics shipments connected to Ghana and addressing security lapses that have allowed these shipments to leave the nation.

Frustrated that his calls for a parliamentary inquiry into recent cocaine seizures had been blocked, Afenyo-Markin stated that whenever the Minority focuses on consensus, citizens demand accountability for these significant security failures. He accused the current government of deliberately employing red herrings to steer public discourse away from potential wrongdoers and safeguarding the country's reputation.

According to Afenyo-Markin, state security agencies are often deployed against political opponents in these situations.

Additionally, the Minority Leader accused the government of utilizing high-profile arrests to provoke partisan controversy and divert the media's attention from investigating significant cocaine seizures involving consignments linked to Ghana. He claimed that these staged events were not genuine law enforcement actions but calculated red herrings designed to saturate news cycles, generate partisan noise, and pull the Ghanaian press away from probing the seizures of tons of cocaine abroad and the nation's lowly fifth-place ranking at Antwerp's port.

In response to these allegations, Afenyo-Markin urged journalists to intensify their investigations into the movement of narcotics through Ghana's ports and borders, especially where parliamentary oversight has been limited. He emphasized that journalists should not accept the government's sanitized press statements or allow themselves to be swayed by political diversion.

Instead, he challenged them to maintain absolute focus on the facts, trace the trail of these narcotic shipments, expose any institutional complicity, and demand accountability for the people of Ghana.