Dennis Miracles Aboagye, the communications director for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has raised concerns about inconsistencies in the financial records related to the evacuation of Ghanaians from South Africa. According to MyJoyOnline, Aboagye presented a detailed review of the paperwork submitted by Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa during a press conference on Sunday, October 18. The opposition official argued that the data does not support the government's assertion that every beneficiary received the full GH¢5,500 allowance.
Aboagye highlighted a specific mismatch between the total number of evacuees and the signature sheets for the transport component of the allowance. While the minister claimed that all 1,964 evacuees received the full amount, the records indicated that only 1,001 individuals signed for the GH¢500 transport portion. The NPP director noted that another 1,508 people were recorded as receiving only the transport portion. He further stated that when the lists were compared name by name, only 824 individuals appeared on both lists, suggesting that approximately 963 of the 1,964 evacuees may not have received the GH¢500 component.
The dispute follows a challenge issued by Minister Ablakwa to the parliamentary minority, who was asked to identify a specific evacuee who did not receive the full allowance. Ablakwa had previously downplayed claims of missing money, characterizing them as an effort to manufacture a controversy. Aboagye’s briefing sought to address this by providing a line-by-line breakdown of the data, arguing that the signatures do not match the headcounts claimed by the ministry.
The core of the disagreement centers on whether the payment records adequately cover the allowances distributed to all evacuated citizens. Aboagye described the process as evacuees arriving in Ghana, signing at one desk for a GH¢5,000 envelope and at another for a GH¢500 envelope, totaling GH¢5,500. He contended that the document submitted by the minister reveals that the number of people who signed for the smaller amount is significantly lower than the total population, raising questions about the completeness of the distribution.