Jubilee House Calls Emergency Meeting on Narcotics, Border Security

President John Dramani Mahama has summoned the heads of Ghana’s key port, customs, intelligence and security institutions to a “high-level meeting” on border security and narcotics control at the Jubilee House on Thursday, 17 September 2026, according to an invitation letter issued by the Office of the President and signed by Secretary to the President Callistus Mahama.

The meeting, set for 12:30 p.m., will review “existing vulnerabilities, intelligence-sharing arrangements, cargo and passenger-screening systems, inter-agency coordination, and the deployment of technology to detect and disrupt narcotics trafficking,” the letter states. Institutions are directed to send their heads, accompanied by no more than one technical officer, and to arrive prepared with an assessment of security gaps and proposals for improved surveillance, screening and joint enforcement.

The letter describes attendance as mandatory “given the urgency and national-security implications.” The invitation list is broad, spanning the finance and foreign affairs ministries, the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority, the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (including its Tema sector command), the Ghana Shippers’ Authority, terminal scanner operators, Ghana Link Network Services, the Ghana Maritime Authority, the Chief of Naval Staff, Meridian Port Services, the National Intelligence Bureau, the Police Criminal Investigations Department/Interpol desk, the Narcotics Control Commission (NACOC) and the Ghana Airports Company.

The breadth of the guest list indicates the meeting is intended to address the full logistics chain — ports, airports, scanning infrastructure and intelligence-sharing — rather than any single agency’s failings. The letter itself does not attribute blame or name any suspect; it is a coordination and planning document.

The context: two foreign seizures in five months

The convening follows two significant foreign drug seizures publicly linked to consignments that transited Ghana.

French customs officers at the port of Dunkirk seized 167 packages containing nearly 3.9 tonnes of cocaine, concealed in a container of plastic waste that had departed Ghana, French authorities said on 7 September 2026; the shipment, part of which was destined for Antwerp, was valued by French officials at roughly €225 million (about $261 million), according to Reuters reporting carried by Graphic Online. NACOC has since said it arrested three suspects in Ghana in connection with the case.

That followed an April 2026 interception by Australian Border Force officers at Sydney’s Port Botany of roughly 320 kilograms of methamphetamine concealed in containers of charcoal shipped from Ghana — one of Australia’s largest-ever methamphetamine seizures, valued at about A$296 million (roughly $208 million).

Three people were arrested in Australia, including a British actress. NACOC said in June 2026 it had arrested a suspected lead shipper in Accra after a months-long investigation. Some domestic reporting on the Australian case has cited differing dates for the seizure itself (April) versus the Ghana-based arrest announcement (June); readers should treat the June date as referring to the arrest, not the interception.

Domestically, authorities have also reported the August 2026 discovery of 866 parcels of suspected cocaine concealed in sacks of gari at a warehouse in the Tema Harbour enclave, a seizure of an estimated 120 slabs of cocaine along the Takoradi–Cape Coast highway, and the March 2025 interception of more than 3.3 tonnes of cocaine concealed beneath sand in a tipper truck at Pedu Junction, Cape Coast.

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