Osofo Ntim’s cocaine: A confederacy of dunces or a conspiracy of dwarfs

By Newscenta On Apr 13, 2025

When a person sets out to find too much in too little, William Shakespeare says he is making a ‘dissension of a doit’.
However, if there is actually something to find, and the person seeking to find them is impeded, thwarted and threatened, Jonathan Swift offers a clue: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are in a confederacy against him”.
By the time we resolve the raging matter about whether two aircrafts that landed in Ghana a few weeks ago delivered cocaine or laundered money, we would know whether Rev. Dr. John Ntim Fordjour, Member of Parliament for Assin South, is a dunce or a true genius.
If the MP is in a conspiracy with dwarfs to sink a government, then he has unwittingly invited us to test the laws of the land and deliver to him the appropriate punishment.
Beyond speaking away with no concrete evidence, it is not clear what the Assin parliamentarian’s motivations are.
It is also not clear what the Holy Spirit may have whispered to the Reverend Minister.

Busts of coincidences
The trouble with dunces (a person who is slow at learning or stupid) is that they may not be dunces at all, and oftentimes, a dunce may shock everybody around them with a compelling masterstroke to show their genius side.
Is it mere happenstance that in the same period the Member of Parliament made his press conference to allege something untoward about suspicious aircrafts landing at the Kotoka airport, there had been a series of drug busts in the country?
In the Central region, the National Security pounced on criminals who had buried substances suspected to be cocaine under sand. The street value was quoted as $350 million, with $150 million worth of the 3.3 tonne consignment allegedly belonging to a politically connected person.
The drugs were smuggled via fishing vessels.
There was yet another bust in the season at Sapeiman, led by ‘invader-in-chief’ Director Richard Jakpa, of some 40 boxes containing fake Ghanaian Cedis and US Dollar currencies, and gold bars.
On March 18, the Narcotics Control Commission (NACOC) got hold of notorious Nigerian drug merchant, Uchechukwu Chima, at Oyarifa, for possessing $2.1 Million worth of cocaine and heroin. The month of March was a soap opera of busts, invasions, explanations and counter-explanations between government spokespersons and members of the opposition.

No climax, no thrill
The plot of the aircraft cocaine theory would not make an enthralling read to any critical mind.
There are no suspenses. There are ironies. There are no climaxes, except when armed men stormed the house of the protagonist. Two irregular airplanes had landed in Ghana and one had overstayed following a tire burst and a gear problem, while the other delivered parts to fix the broken plane.
A member of parliament has problems with this story and has sought to revise the script.
He also thinks photos provided by Felix Kwakye Ofosu, Government spokesman, might have come from another book of aircrafts, and that it doesn’t fall into ordinary practice for airport staff to take photos when engineers are working on planes.
What does Rev. Ntim Fordjour know about airplanes and airport landing protocols?
They are a little different from bible chapters, sermon preparation, and church planting.
As a Reverend Minister, he has a covenant obligation to the truth, but he has a bigger patriotic and nationalistic obligation as a Ranking in Ghana’s Parliament, to promote good governance with responsible conduct.
If he is able to substantiate his allegations with evidence, he would have succeeded in cementing suspicions that Ghana is fast becoming a transit hub for illicit drugs.
If he fails, those suspicions would still linger, especially because of Ghana’s not-so-decent record in international drug trafficking, romance scams, and internet fraud.
Eric Amoateng, a former MP, gave us away when he was jailed for drugs.

Suspicions and suppositions
Cocaine scares me. It must scare Ntim Fordjour, too, and anybody who fears the law. The people in the drug trade are ruthless and greedy.
These days, they have a sexier name: narco-terrorists. In jurisdictions notorious for the drug trade, there are stricter laws and heavy punishment for criminals.
Nobody is safe in an environment where drugs form part of regular conversation.
We cannot, however, wish that conversation away because we are not such an innocent population.
We would not be very surprised if Rev. Fordjour’s cocaine airplanes indeed contained cocaine, just as we are not surprised that 1,347 ECG containers cannot be found.
Where is Rev. Ntim Fordjour now? What becomes of him from here? If the Rev. Minister intends to be the new Interceptor-In-Chief and continue from where Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa left off, then let’s encourage him.
We need somebody to fill that role and monitor the excesses of the executive, no matter who is in government.
In the business of ‘exposes’ and ‘interceptions’, the most important tool is evidence, not suspicions or suppositions.
The evidence must stand scrutiny and be robust enough to counter the venom of propaganda from strange places.
If Ntim Fordjour fails in his maiden ‘interception’ project, he should not be dismissed as an overzealous man misled by dunces or dwarfs.
His impact might make sense after he has left Parliament.
That is how John Kennedy Toole, author of ‘A Confederacy of Dunces,’ was discovered.
After initially failing to get the book published, he committed suicide.
Years later, his mother presented it to publishers and it won a Pulitzer Prize the same year it was published. Ntim is not finished.