[ 2015-04-01 ]

NACOB Arrests Nduom Boys
The Progressive People’s Party (PPP) has
expressed disgust at the manhandling of two of its
youthful members by officials of the Narcotics
Control Board (NACOB).

The two, Divine Nkrumah and Richard Nii Armah,
National Youth Coordinator and Volunteers
Coordinator respectively, were arrested and
detained Saturday evening at the Kotoka
International Airport (KIA) by NACOB officials.
For more than three hours, they were held captive
by the officials. Their phones were seized in the
process, rendering them incommunicado from the
rest of the world.

This was when they returned to the country from a
trip to South Africa where they attended a
conference.

Divine, who narrated his ordeal to DAILY GUIDE,
said moments after disembarking from the South
Africa Airways flight around 9:15 pm, he was
approached by two plain-clothe men who only said
they were officials of NACOB without any
identification cards.

Ordeal

According to him, he was taken out of the queue on
the tarmac and sent to a holding area where an
“extensive search” was conducted into his
luggage, but nothing incriminating was found in
it.

Divine Nkrumah said his passport was subsequently
seized by the men who refused to show any form of
identification to prove their claim as officials
of NACOB, adding that they said the passport was a
state property when he demanded to know why they
were asking for it.

At this point, Divine said he asked one of the
gentlemen, who he later got to know as Vincent
Asiedu, to hand over his and his colleague’s
luggage if they had completed the search.

But that was not the end of the story. According
to him, he was taken to a washroom where he was
undressed and a sample of his urine taken for
reasons he could not fathom.

After that, the PPP youth leader narrated, “They
didn’t tell me anything; then they marched me to
another isolated room at the top where I was
re-scanned and then they took me to another room
again for another scan.”

“I arrived at 9:15 pm and as at 11:30 pm, nobody
had said anything to me or given any reason
whatsoever as to why I was still under detention
there,” he stated.

This seemed to have compelled his colleague Nii
Armah to confront the supposed NACOB officials and
inquire from them why they were still detaining
his friend without any cause.

But that appeared not to have gone down well with
the officials who, according to Divine Nkrumah,
took his colleague through the same molestation,
with his passport seized whiles they searched
through his luggage.

At exactly 11:55 pm, the PPP youth leader said
they were released to go without any form of
explanation or apology for what they had been
taken through, but their passports were given back
to them.

Threat

Divine disclosed that “They threatened that they
were going to blacklist us; that when we travel
next time we will be taken through rigorous
scrutiny.”

He claimed that they were therefore in talks with
the legal team of the party to decide on what line
of action to take.

PPP Position

At a press conference yesterday, National Chairman
of the PPP, Nii Allotey Brew-Hammond, expressed
disappointment in the behaviour of officials of
the state agency, saying, “We are extremely
miffed at the high handedness of NACOB to two of
our officers – Messrs Divine Nkrumah and Richard
Armah – our National Youth Coordinator and
Volunteers Coordinator respectively.”

Present was the party’s flagbearer in the 2012
general election, Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom.

What baffled them most was the fact that the two
young men were easily identified by the supposed
NACOB officials in the mist of lots of people in a
queue, and demanded for their party cards before
allowing them to go. He then queried rhetorically,
“We then ask, when did party card become a
travelling document in Ghana?

“We cannot live in a state similar to the
revolutionary junta that we once had in our
political dispensation. Indeed, this is a
constitutional era and we expect the NACOB to be a
respecter of the law in Ghana.”

Brew-Hammond stressed, “We wish to place on
record that we shall not be intimidated by any
powers from above who do not want to see the
success of the PPP in the next elections.”

Source - Daily Guide

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