Former Head of Information and Public Affairs at Ghana’s Embassy in Washington, D.C., Kofi Tonto has called for the dismissal of officials he says knew about a security gap at the port but failed to address it.
His comments come after President John Dramani Mahama’s security briefing on September 17, 2026, following the seizure of nearly 3.9 tonnes of cocaine in France from a container shipped from Ghana.
Ten people are currently being held as investigations into the case continue, including four officers of the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority.
Mr Tonto said he would have immediately removed officials who advised President Mahama that a problematic policy had been in place for two years without being corrected.
“In fact, if I was the president, I would have fired all the people who advised me that day. I would have fired them immediately,” he said.
He said the main concern was not simply the existence of the alleged security weakness but that officials responsible for supervising the system allegedly knew about it without informing the President.
“They are telling me that they knew there was a bad policy and they supervised over that bad policy until the country faced embarrassment, global embarrassment, before telling me, the president, that there is a lacuna or a lapse at the port,” he said.
To explain his concern, Mr Tonto compared the situation to supervisors who know that goods are being stolen from a company but choose not to tell the owner.
“If you close this loophole, you’ll stop losing that $10 million. How would you feel?” he asked.
He described the alleged failure to act as a serious lapse by officials who were expected to understand and monitor the system.
“They did absolutely nothing about it until we faced a global embarrassment,” he said.
Mr Tonto said the incident should now prompt a closer examination of who knew about the security gap, when they became aware of it, and why it was not addressed sooner.
