NDC Fights Over Ruby Cocaine


The ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) is fighting tooth and nail to extricate itself of any involvement in the Ruby cocaine scandal.

Nayele Ametefe aka Ruby Adu-Gyamfi, a 32-year-old cocaine baroness, was recently sentenced to eight years and eight months’ imprisonment in the United Kingdom following her plea of guilty for carrying 12.5 kilograms of cocaine from Ghana to the UK through the Heathrow Airport, London.

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) recently accused the NDC of complicity in Ruby’s case, especially with her use of the VVIP lounge at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) in Accra and the alleged dispatch of a vehicle from the Ghana High Commission in London with intent to pick her at the Heathrow Airport, which purportedly returned empty.

Even though the NDC is distancing itself from any dealings with the lady at the centre of the drug case, a member of the party, who has since been identified as Peter Boateng Oti, stormed the Isleworth Crown Court where Ruby was tried clad in NDC colours in solidarity with Ruby on the day the cocaine baroness was convicted – January 6, 2015.

The NDC insists that the NPP should rather be blamed for the lady’s role in the drug trade which eventually led to her arrest and subsequent conviction.

This, according to General Secretary of the party, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, was because it was under the NPP’s administration that Ruby was introduced to the cocaine trade.

Claims
At a press conference yesterday, Mr Asiedu Nketia aka General Mosquito said, ‘In the Nayale’s drama, what the NPP has succeeded in doing is to divert attention of the possibility of their own involvement in the scandal.’

Instead, he said the NDC government ‘has demonstrated zero tolerance for the drug business’ and therefore should not be linked to the dreaded narcotics trade.

He described the NPP as a party that endorses drug trade, adding that after the release of Eric Amoateng (former NPP MP of Nkoranza) from jail in the United States for indulging in drug deal, ‘The NPP in their unrepentant mood, organised its members to give him a hero’s welcome at the Kotoka International Airport.’

However, it has turned out that the DCE of Nkoranza serving under the NDC government urged residents to give Amoateng a hero’s welcome because he was a philanthropist extraordinaire.

Some of the people who welcomed Amoateng at the time he arrived said in radio interviews that they came from Odorkor in Accra and that they were bussed with t-shirts to go to the airport and welcome Amoateng, raising suspicion about national security operation.

‘As if this is not enough proof of NPP’s official complicity in the drug business, a ship load of 77 parcels of cocaine vanished in Ghana under the watch of the NPP and has since not been found to date,’ Asiedu Nketia alleged.

He further claimed that around the same time that Ruby was arrested in the UK, the NPP was hosting a fund raising dinner in the UK, wondering if it was a mere coincidence.

General Mosquito has therefore stressed the need for investigations to ascertain whether ‘her [Ruby’s] trip to the UK was purely coincidental to the movement of the top gurus in the NPP for a fund raising event in London.’

Ruby was aided by some high ranking security personnel to go through the VVIP section of the Kotoka International Airport – a place reserved for the President, his ministers and very important personalities – when she embarked on that journey of no return before boarding the British Airways flight to London where she was apprehended.

NPP Punches
The NPP, however, did not understand how the convict had access to the VVIP section of the airport.

They also cited the ‘hasty’ visit by Ghana’s High Commissioner to the UK, Victor Smith, of the then suspect Nayele Ametefe as well as what they claim was conflicting information by government spokespersons on the scandal as basis for government’s complicity.

Apart from that, the NPP raises question as to why an embassy official vehicle was parked at Heathrow Airport to pick an official from Ghana and the vehicle returned empty after the arrest of Ruby on the flight.

The NPP director of communications, Nana Akomea, described the NDC press conference as a mark of desperation.

‘The Wednesday 14 January press conference by Asiedu Nketia, General Secretary of NDC, on the Nayele Ametefe cocaine scandal should be seen by all objective Ghanaians as a desperate attempt to escape the hard questions that government must answer in connection with this scandal,’ Nana Akomea said in a statement issued last night.

He said the NDC had still failed to respond to the most relevant matters being raised by the NPP.

‘The fundamental questions that we asked in our press statement have not been answered and they still remain.

‘Instead, baseless accusations have been made against the NPP by Asiedu Nketia,’ Akomea stated.

According to him, the accusation that the NPP was behind media reports that Ametefe used the VVIP section of the Kotoka International Airport while travelling to the UK is untrue.

‘The NPP has never in any official statement accused Nayele of travelling on diplomatic passport. The party also heard such claims in local and international reports like many other Ghanaians,’ he said.

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