Okudzeto pressured agent to change, issue new invoices – NPP alleges

GhanaWeb reported on Monday, October 19, 2026, that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has demanded that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs explain whether it pressured the agent who arranged charter flights for the recent South Africa evacuation to retroactively issue fresh invoices months after the flights had already taken place. You know, it is one thing for government agencies to execute complex, large-scale international evacuation operations to bring citizens home during crises, but it is an entirely different reality when the opposition raises serious allegations that the financial documentation surrounding these humanitarian efforts is being manipulated after the fact, casting a dark shadow of financial impropriety over what should be a transparent state function.

The Parliament of Ghana, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, the Public Procurement Authority (PPA), the Auditor-General’s Department, the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), and the broader national public financial management, legislative oversight, and anti-corruption frameworks are institutionally mandated to foster the transparent and lawful execution of state expenditures, ensure the strict adherence to public procurement laws, and guarantee that the national purse is protected from inflated billing and financial mismanagement. When a major political party formally alleges that a government ministry pressured a contractor to alter or reissue invoices for services rendered months earlier, it directly tests the core principles of fiscal accountability, institutional transparency, and the foundational need to ensure that the executive branch operates with absolute financial integrity and is subject to rigorous, uncompromising legislative scrutiny.

Speaking at a press conference, the NPP’s National Communications Director, Dennis Miracles Aboagye, presented a series of pointed questions directed at Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa regarding the procurement and billing of the evacuation charters. Aboagye revealed that the party had been informed that the first three charter flights were operated by Ethiopian Airlines and arranged through an agent named Vanderpuye, and he challenged the Minister to confirm whether the Ministry’s Chief Director had recently asked this agent to issue new invoices for those past flights. “If so, why did invoices for flights flown months earlier need to be reissued now?” Aboagye demanded, also questioning why the Ministry had apparently fallen out with the very man who arranged the critical flights. The opposition’s concerns are rooted in stark cost discrepancies; while the Ministry’s documents reportedly value each flight at US$750,000, the NPP asserts that independent industry checks place the cost of a comparable charter at between US$180,000 and US$300,000. Highlighting that GH¢27,183,700, representing 55 percent of the total GH¢49,721,786 spent on evacuating 1,964 Ghanaians, was allocated to these charter flights, Aboagye noted the conspicuous absence of foundational documents. “Publish the original Ethiopian Airlines invoices for all three flights,” he urged. “If the figures are honest, the original invoices will settle this in a day. If they are not produced, Ghanaians will draw their own conclusions.” The NPP has subsequently issued a seven-day ultimatum for the Minister to disclose the operator selection process under the Public Procurement Act, submit the evacuation accounts to an independent audit, and lay all records before Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, even as Minister Ablakwa maintains that all records are available and no money is missing.

You know, when such grave, document-driven allegations of retroactive invoice manipulation and cost inflation are mounted against a ministry handling sensitive humanitarian logistics, it highlights the critical importance of ensuring that our public procurement and auditing institutions aggressively follow the financial paper trail, so that the noble act of evacuating citizens is never exploited as a cover for financial recklessness or the misappropriation of state funds, doesn’t it? As the nation digests these explosive allegations and stakeholders reflect on the urgent need for absolute transparency in consular and humanitarian spending, the public continues to monitor the situation, recognizing that robust public financial management frameworks and cooperative dialogue between Parliament, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Auditor-General, the PPA, political parties, and the citizenry are vital pillars for ensuring fairness, institutional integrity, and order in Ghana’s democratic and fiscal governance landscape.

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