The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has urged the government to publish the names and details of everyone holding Ghanaian diplomatic and service passports, alongside the reasons each document was issued.
The party is also calling for an independent audit by the Auditor-General to examine whether passport holders met the eligibility requirements and why they were selected.
NPP Communications Director Dennis Miracles Aboagye said making the information public would help determine whether the passports had been obtained legitimately.
Speaking on the Asaase Breakfast Show on Monday (2 November), he said the government should explain the basis for granting every diplomatic and service passport.
“Publish the names and details of all those who are holding our service passports and their justification, what qualifies them to hold our service passports and our diplomatic passports. Then we’ll get to know who is fraudulent and who isn’t,” he said.
The demand follows allegations from the NPP that some people were wrongly presented as officials of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) and the Fisheries Commission in letters sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
According to Mr Aboagye, the party had checked the employment details of those individuals and found that they did not hold the positions listed in the correspondence.
He said the NPP’s findings were based on enquiries made with the institutions involved, as well as information published on their official websites and platforms.
The party is asking the Foreign Affairs Ministry to release the original letters requesting service passports for the individuals. Mr Aboagye said those documents could help establish how the alleged misrepresentation occurred.
“The Ministry should be able to give us that source letter, for us to even establish who actually forged or impersonated these individuals,” he said.
Mr Aboagye alleged that the differences between the claims in the letters and the individuals’ actual roles suggested a coordinated effort to obtain passports for people who were not eligible.
He stressed that service passports were not an automatic entitlement for all public servants. Eligibility, he said, depended on a person’s position, rank and official duties.
The NPP official argued that the government could settle the dispute by releasing the relevant records instead of immediately suspending the passports.
“The government can resolve this in 30 minutes,” he said, adding that the necessary information could be obtained from Ministry records.
Asked whether the NPP would accept similar scrutiny of its own period in government, Mr Aboagye said the current administration had access to the records and should identify and publish any irregularities.
He also defended the granting of diplomatic passports to media personalities, social media influencers and celebrities, saying such decisions should be supported by clear explanations of their contribution to Ghana’s international profile.
Mr Aboagye said the NPP had written to diplomatic missions about the alleged irregularities. Seven more missions had received the party’s correspondence by the Friday before the interview, he added, with further letters due to be sent.
He said the NPP would continue to demand accountability if the government did not address its concerns.
