The General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, has turned the fire on the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) over attempts to link the governing party to the recent arrest of Nayele Ametefe with drugs in London, insisting the NPP stinks of drugs.
The vociferous General Secretary, aka General Mosquito, indicated at a press conference in Accra that the NPP’s culpability in the drug trade was behind their attempt to divert attention of Ghanaians into believing the NDC was rather behind it.
“A careful analysis of the statements particularly from NPP leadership and their pliable members of the press can leave no one in doubt about desperate attempt to silence the NDC critics of NPP’s complicity in the cocaine menace thereby weakening our resolve in fighting the menace,” he asserted.
He observed that the NPP deliberately began a campaign to link the Nayele case to the NDC even before facts could be made public. The campaign was simply to shift attention from the drug infestation that has gripped the party.
According to General Mosquito, the first desperate attempt was to post the picture of a known NDC member who played a crucial role on the 2012 campaign of President Mahama on the internet, wrongly labeling her as the lady who had been arrested with cocaine in London.
The lady quickly rebutted it with a press conference to expose the mistaken identity, he indicated.
After failing in the first attempt, General Mosquito said the NPP followed it up with the next desperate claim that Nayele travelled through the VVIP and her access to the facility was aided by a call from a “big man above” instructing the staff to comply.
The NPP tried to imply that the “big man” in question was President Mahama but when it came out clearly that she used the VIP lounge instead of the VVIP through which the President travels and the “big man” in question was identified and arrested, the NPP went back only to come up with another vain plot.
He disclosed that the NPP further went on trying to implicate members of Ghana’s Mission in London in the case due to a visit by its staff to find out facts of the case that involved a Ghanaian.
General Mosquito recollected how Nana Akufo-Addo, then Minister of Foreign Affairs and NEPAD, issued a statement on the right of Ghanaian citizens, including suspected drug barons, to consular services as carried by Ghanaian Times of 16th May 2005, in defense of a similar visit to Eric Amoateng, then Member of Parliament for Nkoranza North, by Ghana’s Mission in the US.
“When that failed, NPP demonstrated a 00% (One hundred percent) tolerance for cocaine business by using state resources to pay Eric Amoateng his salary as MP for six months, before his seat was declared vacant” he recalled, adding that, “During the campaign in the subsequent bye-elections President Kufuor, Nana AkuffoAddo and all the NPP gurus openly endorsed the conduct of Eric Amoateng in the cocaine business by praising him for paying the school fees and providing other support for his constituents from the proceeds of the cocaine trade and asking the people of Nkoranza North to vindicate him by voting for the NPP candidate, Major Eric Oduro.”
To Asiedu Nketia these instances, together with the disappearance of a ship loaded with 77 parcels of cocaine in Ghana under the watch of NPP, which has since not been found to date, clearly implicate the NPP in the drug business in Ghana.