Bring the document: QMS checked all 42 claims from Monday's heated Good Morning Ghana panel

Two new party spokesmen clashed for more than an hour on Metro TV's Good Morning Ghana on Monday 2 November 2026. Julius Kwame Anthony, a Deputy Communications Director of the governing NDC and Press Secretary at the Ministry of the Interior, sat across from Lawyer Kwesi Botchway Jnr, a Deputy Communications Director of the opposition NPP. The host, Moro Awudu, reminded both that the right to rebut exists so that a factually inaccurate point can be corrected.

QMS checked every claim either man made that could be tested against the record: 42 in all, 18 from Mr Botchway and 24 from Mr Anthony, using the same standard for both. Slips of the tongue were not scored for either man.

The scoreboard

Kwesi Botchway Jnr (NPP), 18 claims: 7 true or mostly true, 7 misleading, 3 false, 1 with no evidence.

Julius Kwame Anthony (NDC), 24 claims: 10 true, mostly true or partly true, 2 misleading, 6 false, 6 unproven.

The evacuation bill

Between May and September 2026, President John Dramani Mahama's NDC government brought home 1,964 Ghanaians from South Africa. Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa put the cost at ₵49,721,786, of which ₵27,183,700 went on three chartered flights, according to documents released under the Right to Information Act. Each evacuee was promised ₵5,000 to resettle and ₵500 for transport. Mr Botchway's figures on all of these were correct.

Neither man mentioned that ₵16 million of the bill came from Engineers and Planners, the company of businessman Ibrahim Mahama, so the state's share was about ₵33.7 million (GBC).

Mr Botchway said the Ministry's own documents showed only 1,173 evacuees. That figure is the NPP Minority's own count from the Ministry's papers (926 on charters plus 247 on itemised commercial flights). The Ministry says 956 came on the charters and 1,008 on commercial flights, and it has published all 1,964 names and signatures. QMS rated the claim misleading.

His comparison of about US$2,500 a head with a US$1,000 tour package was also misleading. A charter seat works out at about US$2,400, close to his figure, but an emergency evacuation flight and a holiday package are not comparable. Whether the charters were overpriced cannot be judged until the invoices are published.

He said ₵14 million was unaccounted for "as a fact". The Minority's own gaps add up to ₵13.44 million and its headline figure is ₵16.4 million "requiring further reconciliation". No audit has found money missing, and the Ministry rejects the figure. His suggestion that the charters might have cost only ₵5 million and been inflated has no evidence behind it. His wider claims that money was stolen and that the government was "an organised ring of dishonest people" were rated no evidence: no auditor, court or committee has made such a finding. On 17 October the Minority's ranking member on the Foreign Affairs Committee, Samuel Abu Jinapor, said the Minority had not accused the minister of wrongdoing.

Mr Anthony said JoyNews Research had found a gap of only about ₵390,000. A JoyNews segment did put ₵396,500 on the payment discrepancies, but JoyNews also reported duplicate names, unsigned payments and suspected forged signatures, and its findings do not touch the ₵27 million charter bill. Presenting it as the final figure was misleading. His claim that the NPP's Communications Director first put the gap at ₵22-23 million could not be found in anything the NPP has published, so it is unproven.

He also said the JoyNews report showed 1,842 people. On JoyNews' Super Morning Show on 26 October, JoyNews' head of research, Isaac Kofi Adjei, said the team could count "minimum 1,842" people with unique details who had signed, below the Ministry's 1,964. QMS rated this mostly true: it is JoyNews' count of unique signers, not of everybody evacuated.

Did Ablakwa face the committee?

Mr Anthony said Mr Ablakwa had accounted "in detail" to Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee. That meeting never took place, so the claim is false. The briefing was set for 16 September, the Minority refused to attend until it had the documents, and on 27 October the committee chair, Alfred Okoe Vanderpuije (NDC), said the minister had still not appeared.

That also makes Mr Botchway's claim that Mr Ablakwa was running from accountability misleading, because his own side stayed out of that meeting. His claim that the Minority had received no answer for weeks was misleading too: the Ministry answered the Minority's information request on 18 September with a 200-page report, and on 17 September it wrote to the Auditor-General asking for a special audit of every government evacuation since 2017. The Minority wants an international firm instead.

Mr Anthony's claim that committee hearings are not public was misleading: since 2024, Parliament's Standing Orders make committee meetings public by default.

Was Ablakwa the first to publish costs?

Mr Anthony said no government had published what an evacuation cost before Mr Ablakwa. On 22 July 2021, the NPP government's Foreign Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, told Parliament what the COVID-19 evacuations had cost, including ₵8.725 million for China and US$1.87 million for the UAE (Graphic, Citi). One 2021 report says the question was asked by Mr Ablakwa, then an MP. No published cost was found for the 2022 Ukraine evacuation, so that half of his point stands. QMS rated the claim mostly false.

His quote of Mr Jinapor saying the Minority was "not accusing" Mr Ablakwa was accurate but dated. On 27 October Mr Jinapor said the spending "smacks of a grand scheme of corruption", an allegation that has not been proven.

Passports

On 30 October the NPP, through its General Secretary Justin Kodua Frimpong, petitioned the US Chargé d'Affaires in Accra about passports approved in Foreign Ministry letters of 6 and 7 August that describe some holders by NADMO job titles the NPP says they do not hold. The Ministry had not answered that point publicly at the time of the panel. Mr Botchway described these as diplomatic passports. All six were service passports, so the claim was misleading.

Mr Anthony read the passport law correctly: sections 6 and 7 of the Passports and Travel Certificates Decree, 1967 (NLCD 155) cover diplomatic and special passports. He was also right that NPP figures lost diplomatic passports: in May 2025 the Mahama government cancelled 701 diplomatic and service passports issued under the Akufo-Addo government that had not been returned, including those of former MPs from all parties.

Cocaine cases

Mr Botchway said Nayele Ametefe, arrested at Heathrow with cocaine, held a Ghanaian diplomatic passport. She was arrested on 10 November 2014, under the Mahama-led NDC government, and the Narcotics Control Board said she travelled on an Austrian passport. That claim is false. But court transcripts reported in Austria said she was given access to the VVIP lounge at Kotoka, three officials were charged in Ghana, including a Foreign Ministry deputy director, and on 24 February 2015 the state dropped the case and the court freed all six accused (MyJoyOnline).

Mr Anthony said Eric Amoateng, a sitting NPP MP arrested in the United States in November 2005 under the Kufuor government, used a diplomatic passport to carry heroin from Afghanistan. Reports at the time say the heroin was hidden in a pottery shipment that came through London. No source found mentions Afghanistan or a diplomatic passport; Mr Amoateng's attempt to claim diplomatic immunity failed. He later pleaded guilty. The passport part is false.

Mr Anthony also said the only people who had dealt drugs with diplomatic passports in Ghana were NPP members. That is false. Frank Benneh, a Ghanaian diplomat at the country's UN mission in Geneva, was arrested in January 1996, under Jerry Rawlings' NDC government, on suspicion of dealing cocaine. Ghana tried him at home, and in June 2000 a tribunal convicted him by a majority and sentenced him to 20 years, granting bail pending appeal (Reuters).

Later in the programme, Mr Botchway told Mr Anthony he had called Mr Benneh an NPP MP and asked which constituency he represented. Mr Anthony replied that he did not know the name. In the broadcast, nobody on the panel mentioned Mr Benneh before Mr Botchway did; the MP Mr Anthony had named was Mr Amoateng. QMS rated Mr Botchway's claim false.

Mr Anthony said US State Department reports had described a man who later became president on the NPP ticket as a drug addict who dealt drugs. What exists are confidential 2008 US embassy cables, published by WikiLeaks in 2011, recording what individuals told embassy staff. They are not State Department findings, and in the cable QMS could read, the word "addict" does not appear. As stated, the claim is false.

Mr Botchway was right that a Syrian man was arrested at Beirut airport on 31 October with more than 40kg of cocaine after a flight from Accra (Citi, GBC). QMS found nothing linking him to a Ghanaian passport. His claim of about 12 major cocaine busts abroad is false: the NPP's own count has five abroad, and JoyNews counted four.

Also checked

Mr Anthony was right that Mr Ablakwa gave the cost breakdown at press conferences (27 July and 7 September). His claim that passport expiry dates had been entered as birth dates is true for 15 records at the Pretoria High Commission, on one published source. He was right that Mr Ablakwa raised a ₵2.6 million National Cathedral payment to JNS Talent Centre in January 2023; the Cathedral Secretariat said it was a refund. His claims that a Passport Office officer was told to step aside, that the Minority called the briefing a "secret meeting" (every source says "closed-door"), and about a mother and daughter short-changed ₵500 could not be confirmed. Mr Botchway was right that a licence to hold a gun in Ghana requires the holder to be 18, though the National Commission on Small Arms has flagged minors with guns. His claim that the New York mayor "granted" a visa for the mother of Javits Frimpong was misleading: Zohran Mamdani said President Trump had agreed to grant it.

History

Mr Anthony said J.B. Danquah wrote to the Queen asking that Ghana be denied independence. Danquah's well-known 1951 letter, written in the reign of King George VI, went to a private individual and attacked Nkrumah's "self-government now" campaign. His only reported letter to the Queen came in 1960, against Ghana becoming a republic. Opposition groups did lobby Britain in 1956 over the terms of independence, but no letter from Danquah asking the Queen to deny independence was found. False.

Mr Botchway said the NDC had petitioned foreign diplomats in 2005, 2017, 2020 and 2022. The 2017 petition to the diplomatic corps and the 2022 petition to the Commonwealth Secretariat (led by Johnson Asiedu Nketiah) are on record. No 2005 petition was found, though a leaked US cable records Atta Mills telling the US Ambassador in March 2006 that the ROPA law was "a recipe for rigging elections". In June 2020 opposition parties petitioned ECOWAS, the UN and the AU about the voters' register. He left out August 2019, when the NDC Minority petitioned the US Ambassador over the PDS power deal and Mr Ablakwa delivered it. Rated mostly true, wrong on details.

What is still unanswered

The invoices for the ₵27 million charter flights have not been published. The Auditor-General has not reported on the Ministry's 17 September audit request. For Tuesday 3 November, the NPP announced a march, "Yɛgye yɛ Sika", from Villaggio to the Foreign Ministry and Jubilee House.

Neither guest nor the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has publicly responded to these findings. Any response or correction will be added to this story.

ON RECORD is a QMS show that checks what public figures say against the record. This story is based on the episode's fact check. Allegations of theft and corruption made on the programme have not been proven by any audit, court or committee.