@ ‘Ye Gye Yen Sika’ Demo
By Gifty Boateng
The main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) is set to stage a high-stakes political showdown on the streets of Accra on Tuesday, November 3, dragging a controversial cast of faceless South Africa evacuees into the glaring light of public protest.
The party’s Youth Wing, under the banner of the “National Youth Bank,” is organizing the ‘Ye Gye Yen Sika’ demonstration to demand an independent audit and the head of Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa.
But the plot thickened on Monday when NPP Deputy Director of Communications, Kwesi Botchwey Jnr, revealed that aggrieved returnees who claim they were shortchanged by the government would join the march.
“I am being informed that many of these evacuees have actually expressed interest to join the minority and the National Youth Wing of NPP to protest and demand accountability,” Botchwey said on Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana.
The planned appearance is a seismic shift in the political chess game. The governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) has spent weeks hammering the NPP over the anonymity of the alleged victims, questioning how individuals could claim financial losses while hiding in the shadows. On Tuesday, the shadows are expected to walk the streets.
At the heart of the storm is the government’s reported expenditure of approximately GH¢49.7 million to evacuate 1,964 Ghanaians from South Africa.
Botchwey claims that documents obtained via a Right to Information (RTI) request show about GH¢27 million was spent on chartering three flights. The NPP is demanding the original invoices, arguing the cost is inflated.
“The government is not immune from accounting to the Ghanaian people just because they have engaged in a humanitarian exercise,” Botchwey fired. He compared the cost of approximately US1,000 for a three-day trip.
But the mathematics of the evacuation are murkier than a flight manifest. The NPP insists that while the government claims 1,964 people were evacuated, records allegedly supplied to the Minority and Joy News only account for 1,173 people a discrepancy of nearly 800 “ghost” evacuees.
The opposition is also demanding proof of a reported GH¢5,500 support payment per evacuee, alongside an independent audit by an internationally accredited firm.
The NPP’s attack on Ablakwa is deeply personal, accusing the Foreign Minister of abandoning the fierce accountability standards he championed while in opposition.
“It is surprising that someone who had a ‘mongoose appetite for accountability’ now appears to be avoiding scrutiny,” Botchwey quipped, calling for Ablakwa’s resignation or removal if he fails to provide satisfactory answers.
But the NDC is not taking the punches lying down. In a blistering counter-offensive, NDC Deputy Director of Communications Julius Kwame Anthony ridiculed the NPP’s sudden reliance on the evacuees, accusing the party of a glaring contradiction.
“Kwesi, don’t you find it quite embarrassing that you who are saying that you are protecting the evacuees… cannot put them out to the public so that we know them, but somehow, they are participating in a demonstration?” Anthony asked. “How can the same people who are willing to come out and say, ‘It was me, Kofi, or it was me, Kwabena Manu, who was shortchanged,’ suddenly be confident to go on demonstration?”
Anthony dismissed the NPP’s case as “a classical case of believe me, bro,” pointing out that the party cannot even clearly state the amounts allegedly owed to the evacuees.
“‘Ye gye yen sika’ how much is the money you are demanding?” he asked.
The NDC spokesperson further dismissed alleged irregularities in the evacuation records, noting that some evacuees had entered their passport expiry dates instead of their dates of birth, resulting in records suggesting some people were born in the future.
“Mistakes on forms do not necessarily point to fraud,” Anthony argued, adding that the shifting figures from NPP communicators from GH¢23 million to GH¢14 million to GH¢390,000 exposed the weakness of the opposition’s case.
Anthony did not mince words in linking the attacks to what he described as the NPP’s resentment towards three prominent government figures Sammy Nartey George, Sammy Gyamfi, and Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa whom he alleged the NPP blamed for its devastating defeat in the 2024 general elections.
He accused the opposition of seeking to undermine individuals who speak out against corruption, citing Ablakwa’s previous allegations concerning a GH¢2 million transfer from the National Cathedral Secretariat to an account linked to Reverend Kusi Boateng.
Anthony described the Foreign Minister as “the last of a dying breed” of anti-corruption campaigners
Despite the bitter back-and-forth, the NPP insists its demands are straightforward: flight invoices, receipts, reconciled evacuee figures, and proof of the GH¢5,500 payments.
On Tuesday, the streets of Accra will become the arena where the NDC’s demand for faces and the NPP’s demand for dollars collide. The only question remaining is whether the evacuees will show up and if they do, whether they will be the political bombshell the NPP hopes for, or a credibility trap of their own making.