Who Is More Pro-Drugs Than The Other? Really Who Cares? Fix The Fix!

On Monday, December 20, 2010, I said on Asempa FM that it was possible drug barons could be contributing financially to political parties without leaders of the parties knowing, and called on the authorities to tighten the rules to make it more difficult for drug money to soil our politics.

Regardless of how the current boss of NACOB might have made a similar point this week, it is difficult for any of the political parties to make the argument that they are not sponsored by proceeds from illicit trade, being it drugs or any other.

On March 10, 2006, the DAILY GUIDE carried this front page story:  “Head of Communications at the Atta Mills campaign office, Kuku Hill Osu, was arrested on Thursday in connection with a $38 million cocaine haul at East Legon.”

“He was however granted bail later on the same day. A source at the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) told the paper that Rojo was invited for questioning after his name was mentioned by two Venezualans, Joel Mella, 35, and Italo Cabeza Castillo, 38, who were arrested in connection with the $38 million cocaine haul at East Legon on November 27, 2005.”

The story continued, “Five hundred and eighty-eight pieces of wrapped pellets, suspected to be cocaine were found concealed in paper boxes in two rooms, with a gross weight of 580 kilogrammes valued at $38 million.”

Mr. Mettle-Nunoo, currently the Deputy Minister of Health, threatened to sue. His issue was that yes, he served, but innocently, as a local business associate/consultant for the Venezuelan who had come to Ghana posing as a genuine businessman.

Had that transit link not being busted, there would have been no guarantee that proceeds from there would not have been donated towards a political goal.

Indeed, Mr. Mettle-Nunoo was never charged with any involvement in the drug trade. So, no link was established between him and that illicit project. But that only goes to show how vulnerable our politics and politicians are.

Indeed, a whole drug trafficker managed to not only sponsor politics, but to sponsor himself to become a legislature. It took the sharp eyes of the American system to let us know that not all that is MP is honourable. That is why we have to shelve the politics and deal with the problem head-on.

It is easy to be frustrated by the politics of drugs that has dominated discussions over how Ghana should tackle the drug problem. I am frustrated and disturbed because I have two beautiful little girls growing up here in Ghana and I want society to protect them from drugs, beyond what I can offer as a parent.

How to tackle the drug problem is not what has become a political issue, but who to blame – it is like what is important is making and winning the case about which of the two parties is more hooked on coke than the other.

We are behaving as if Ghana is the first nation on earth to be visited by the menace of illicit drugs, and perhaps as a reaffirmation of why we are where we are and why we are not where we must be: it is because we spend more energy and time talking about and analysing our problems, rather than proposing, introducing and implementing solutions.

Illicit drugs are neither an NPP nor NDC problem. It is a national problem; a regional problem; a global pandemic hovering over our clouds, too. As more concerted efforts were applied in tackling the Caribbean route, West Africa became a target at the turn of the millennium and more so since cocaine in Europe fetches twice as much money per kilo than it does in the United States.

President Kufuor’s misfortune is that his term of office coincided with the geo-strategic decision by the international drug merchants to use vulnerable and convenient West Africa as a favourable route to the lucrative European market. Fortunately for the traffickers, in West Africa, there already existed decades of drug smuggling infrastructures, weak and corrupt institutions of state, poverty, straight oceanic route from the Americas and closer proximity to the active Southern European drugs corridor.

For example, since 2003, 99 percent of all drugs seized in Africa are found in West Africa. Between 1998 and 2003, the total quantity of cocaine seized each year in Africa was around 600kg. But by 2006, the figure had risen five-fold and during the first nine months of 2007, had already reached 5.6 tonnes.

Out of the 5.6 tonnes of cocaine seized in 2007, 99% were reported from Western African countries: 2.4 tonnes were seized in Senegal, almost 1.5 tonnes were seized in Mauritania, 0.6 tonnes in Guinea-Bissau, 0.5 tonnes in Cape Verde, 0.4 tonnes in Benin and 0.2 tonnes in Guinea.

Analysts at the time believed this was probably only the tip of the iceberg because the lack of seizure reports from neighbouring Western African countries did not necessarily mean the absence of trafficking in these countries, but more likely the deficiency of law enforcement capacities.

The traditional trans-Caribbean and transatlantic smuggling routes were being effectively patrolled and as such this forced the drug cartels to seek out new paths, which is where West Africa comes in; the shortest line of latitude westwards from the ports and airstrips of South America.

The illegal drug market is one of the most profitable in the world and as such, it attracts the most ruthless, sophisticated, and aggressive criminal gangs who have identified the loosely policed West African coast and its close proximity to Europe as an easier route to the targeted consumers in the West.

If we are not clever in stopping it from coming to our shores, as in holding warehouse for onward transition and spending more energy in stopping it from leaving our shores, we risk, as it is already happening, forcing the traffickers to cultivate greater local consumption to get rid of their stock.

During the New Patriotic Party administration, Ghana introduced a number of measures to combat the scourge of drug trafficking. Let us focus on what is being done today to enhance the fight against the menace.

The NPP introduced measures such as Operation Westbridge, the Ghana container terminal project, the passing of the Anti Money Laundering Bill, the setting up of the Economic and Organised Crime Office and also the Customs Mutual Assistance Agreement, all in a bid to fight the drug menace.

The opposition NDC, at the time, criticised the Kufuor government for not showing enough commitment to the fight against drugs.

“The NDC Government shall effect the pledge made by our presidential candidate Professor John Evans Atta Mills that ‘An Atta Mills Government will not allow this country to be turned into a subsidiary of drug cartels’.” This, surprisingly, is the only policy statement made by the NDC in its 2008 manifesto to fight the drug menace.

We should try and shift the debate to what measures are being put in place to tackle the trade. But there is another aspect of the illicit stuff – substance abuse. Apart from trafficking, the issue of drug abuse is not being tackled with the necessary attention in Ghana.

The Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) has indicated that cases of abuse of drugs such as cocaine, heroin, cannabis and alcohol have increased in the country.

Available statistics from the Accra and Pantang Psychiatric hospitals have shown that the number of youth within the age group of 15-­20 involved in the abuse of drugs kept increasing from 2003 to 2010.

It said there were 145 cases in 2003, com­pared to 767 cases in 2010; an average percentage increase of 61 percent annually.

UN anti-drugs officials believe cocaine trafficking through West Africa to reach the lucrative markets in Europe is getting increasingly sophisticated. The UNODC says it has proof to show that drugs are mostly coming through maritime routes and especially by use of sub-marines.

The regional head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Alexandre Schmidt, has stated that cocaine seizures have gone down in West Africa generally. While we may wish to prance high in taking political credit for it, we should also be worried that the flow of drugs to Europe remains strong.

It is for this reason that Schmidt says he has every reason to believe the trade was still increasing, and was now worth some $800m a year. The other fear is of increasing involvement by West Africans themselves, with regional cartels emerging, he added.

According to him, the amount of cocaine bound for Europe and seized in West Africa has dropped in recent years, but that only means the trade is getting more sophisticated.

It is increasingly clear that the drug trade in West Africa is going the way of Mexico, with local players increasingly taking control of an ever more sophisticated system to smuggle cocaine into the rich market to the north, the United Nations says.

The question is what are we doing to deal with the dealers, to educate the youth of the dangers of drugs and to rehabilitate the abusers?