The recent tour of the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany by the flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo, to interact with party members in preparation for the 2012 election, has been overshadowed by revelation that his Special Assistance (PA), Yaw Amfo-Kwakye, was once jailed in the UK for exporting cannabis to that country.

Amfo-Kwakye, Nana’s right-hand man, according to reports, was once jailed in London for five years in the ‘80s for exporting wee, concealed in tubers of yam, to that country.

The Herald has gathered that Akufo-Addo used to be seen in Amfo-Kwakye’s company at the Tip Toe Lane, an entertainment spot at Kwame Nkrumah Circle, in Accra in the evenings, where the two openly drank beer and Guinness, and puffed away on their sticks of cigarette while The Statesman, Nana’s brainchild, was being printed and packaged for sale the next morning. This happened in the early ‘90s.

The report said that officials became suspicious when Amfo-Kwakye, a cousin to Nana Akufo-Addo, got down from a Ghana Airways plane, and insisted on taking away the yams which had gotten rotten and customs officers thought yams were of no use and that they should be thrown away.

The report said that the police trailed Amfo-Kwakye to an area known to be inhabited by drug addicts, where they caught him selling the drug to a Greek national.

He was subsequently arrested, tried, found guilty and jailed for five years.

Nana Asante-Bediatuo who thought he was out to water down a publication carried by the Lens Newspaper, had called into a discussion on the issue on Asempa FM’s “Eko Si Sen” programme, to confirm the story and explain what happened.

He held brief for Amfo-Kwakye, saying that (Amfo-Kwakye) had learnt his lessons and, hence, reformed, as had many people including several men of God, who upon having a brush with the law, repented and had become dedicated to the work of God.

Amfo-Kwakye is said to be an LLB, London graduate, apart from being the cousin of the NPP flagbearer for the 2012 election, has been a close associate.

He once managed Akufo-Ado’s newspaper, The Statesman, and is believed to be the cause of Alhaji Haruna Attah, one-time editor of the Statesman newspaper, leaving it to establish his own newspaper called the Accra Mail.

Yaw Amfo-Kwakye, served the paper as Managing Director and Special Assistant to Nana Akufo-Addo. He is said to have subsequently served Nana Addo, when he was Foreign Affairs Minister in the John Kufuor administration.

The NPP flagbearer has always found it difficult to extricate himself from allegations of drug use and associating with people who are on record to have been jailed for drug-trafficking.

Last week Saturday, listeners of the Accra-based Radio Gold, were shocked to hear Samuel Abu Jinapor, an Aide to Akufo-Addo, saying that “Nana Addo has been taken to the laundry. He is now clean.”

This was in response to Mr. Kwadwo Twum-Boafo, of the Ghana Free Zones Board, who had made a meal out of the revelations on Yaw Amfo-Kwakye, that President John Mills, as compared to Nana Addo, is one to be entrusted with the destiny of the country as he has not surrounded himself with drug barons.

Raymond Amankwah, a brother- in-law of Nana Akufo Addo, is now serving a jail term in Brazil for trafficking cocaine into that country.

Earlier, he had served a jail term in the United States of America, for trafficking cocaine to that country. However, contrary to the law confiscating assets of drug dealers, Raymond Amankwah, after serving his jail term, came down to Ghana to get his assets defrozen, and given back to him during the tenure of Nana Akufo-Addo as the Attorney-General.