President John Mahama has hinted of plans to review the caliber of people who use the VIP lounge at the Kotoka International Airport, after it was revealed that Nayele Ametefe who was arrested in the UK for carrying cocaine, used that lounge.
[contextly_sidebar id=”b2UvgcOeXNAd3mfyXRcTccm8QerbWWop”]The development has cast a slur on the security situation at the airport and Ghana’s efforts to fight the illicit drug trade.
But speaking on the Good Evening Ghana programme on Metro TV, President John Mahama said: “We continue to be committed against the fight against drugs. We cannot do it alone, the whole world, there is a collaboration amongst governments to ensure we stop this criminal trade and so we have been collaborating with our international partners in respect of drug arrest.”
The dismissed Board Chair of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) Baffour Assasie-Gyimah in an earlier interview with Citi News said his outfit had raised red flags over the security situation at the VIP lounge.
He revealed that the identity of the owner of the scanner at that lounge is still unknown, a situation he said compromises the security situation at the airport.
The President acknowledged the security lapses and said: “We have to continue to appraise the weaknesses in our system and ensure that we tighten them so that these things don’t happen again.”
“The investigative agencies are looking at the circumstances under which the lady was able to do what she did, and we will learn lessons from that and tighten things even further,” he added.
He said one of the major things government would review is how the VIP lounge at the airport is used and who has access to it.
“We need to really strengthen and tighten that,” he said.
Dissolving NACOB Governing Board
Mr. Assasie-Gyimah had said in a statement that he feels the dissolution of the board was to sacrifice them for “an angry god.”
Government had seriously dented the image of NACOB by debunking their claims that they collaborated with British authorities to arrest Nayele Ametefe.
The President’s subsequent dissolution of the board sent signals that the move was as a result of their seeming aloofness in such a big case.
But explaining the reasons for his decision, President Mahama said he did that because, “NACOB’s board had actually expired and so we were in the process of reconstituting it and so we will just go ahead and reconstitute it.”
By: Nana Boakye-Yiadom/citifmonline.com/Ghana