The Jatikay Centre for Human Security and Peace Building has called for a comprehensive review of Ghana’s security and cargo-control systems following what it describes as an alarming pattern of large-scale narcotics consignments linked to the country.

The Centre has also urged the government to look beyond arrests and seizures and investigate the networks, financiers and facilitators allegedly operating behind the consignments.

In a statement issued on September 15, 2026, the Executive Director of the Centre, Adib Saani, welcomed the decision by the President to bring together security, intelligence, narcotics-control, customs, port and other relevant agencies to address the emerging threat.

However, Mr Saani said the reported scale and frequency of the cases raised broader questions about the effectiveness of Ghana’s intelligence, border-control and port-security arrangements.

He said the situation warranted scrutiny of whether the institutions responsible for detecting and disrupting such threats had been sufficiently proactive.

According to him, the President’s intervention was necessary, but it also raised questions about how such a pattern could have developed without earlier decisive action from the national security coordination architecture.

“The National Security Coordinator, in particular, should have anticipated the threat rather than responding after multiple major international seizures,” he said.

Call for leadership changes

As an immediate confidence-building measure, the Centre called on the President to consider changing key officers responsible for different stages of the security and cargo-control chain.

It also proposed an independent vulnerability assessment of the systems involved to identify weaknesses that could be exploited by organised criminal networks.

Mr Saani stressed, however, that the proposed changes should not be construed as accusations of wrongdoing against specific individuals.

Rather, he said, they were intended to restore public confidence and provide fresh leadership where serious vulnerabilities might have emerged.

Go beyond couriers

The Centre further called for investigations into the wider architecture behind the narcotics consignments, saying enforcement efforts should not end with the arrest of couriers.

It said the investigations should seek to identify the financiers, facilitators, potentially compromised insiders and international criminal networks connected to the shipments.

Mr Saani described the situation as extending beyond conventional narcotics control, saying it had implications for national security and institutional integrity.

“This is no longer simply a narcotics-control issue. It is a national security and institutional integrity challenge. Ghana cannot afford to become a logistics hub for transnational organised crime,” he said.

The statement was signed by Mr Saani on behalf of the Jatikay Centre for Human Security and Peace Building.