Nkrabea Effah-Dartey, currently a member of parliament and a former chairman of Ghana’s Narcotics Control Board (NCB), who raised a storm of controversy recently after his decision to represent drug defendants in court as an attorney, has reversed his decision after a meeting with Attorney General Joe Ghartey.
Effah-Dartey, who lost his position as Deputy Minister of the Interior during the last ministerial shuffle and had to relinquish his chairmanship as a result - the one position goes with the other - initially justified his decision by invoking a right to earn fees for the vocation he had trained for. He will now pull out of a court case he is currently involved in, defending an alleged drug trafficker.
Critics, including the editors of the Public Agenda, hit back, arguing quite rightly that being the former chairman of the NCB raised “serious concerns of conflict of interest”, including the possibility that he might be privy to confidential information that would be helpful to his client. Being a current member for parliament also couldn’t have helped I would imagine, particularly as Ghana’s government is on a prominent public campaign against drug trafficking at the moment.
There were also fears it would damage Ghana’s image on the international stage. Ghana already has enough to worry about when it comes to controversy over government officials and the drug trade, what with bribery allegations against some top police officers in the case of two captured Venezuelan drug traffickers as well as the missing bags of cocaine from a ship intercepted by authorities off the coast of Ghana in April.