In what is being fiercely condemned as a brazen escalation of the government’s systematic witch-hunt against former New Patriotic Party (NPP) appointees, operatives from the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) have arrested and unlawfully detained Dennis Miracles Aboagye at the Kotoka International Airport.
The dramatic operation, executed late Sunday, July 12, with the assistance of immigration officials, unfolded just hours after the former campaign spokesperson for Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia officially declared his candidacy for the NPP’s National Communications Director position. Moving with an aggressive urgency that senior opposition figures say exposes a clear partisan motive, state security operatives intercepted Mr. Aboagye upon his arrival in the country, immediately whisking him away into an undisclosed location without preferring any formal charges or allowing him baseline constitutional protections.
The heavy-handed arrest has ignited widespread fury across the NPP leadership, with General Secretary Justin Kodua Frimpong immediately issuing a stinging indictment of the state’s tactics. In a strongly-worded statement, Kodua Frimpong revealed that Mr. Aboagye’s legal defense team has been completely denied access to their client in direct violation of Article 14(2) of the 1992 Constitution, leaving his family and associates entirely in the dark regarding his physical well-being.
The party’s chief scribe completely rejected the state’s vague insinuations linking the arrest to corruption investigations from Aboagye’s past tenure as the Chief Executive Officer of the Inter-Ministerial Coordinating Committee on Decentralisation (IMCC). He blasted the operation as pure political intimidation engineered to disrupt internal party dynamics and silence one of the regime’s most formidable and outspoken critics.
Adding significant weight to the growing backlash, the Member of Parliament for Ofoase/Ayirebi, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has strongly rebuked the Mahama-led administration for setting a dangerous democratic precedent by weaponizing law enforcement agencies against political opponents. Oppong Nkrumah argued that because Mr. Aboagye is a highly visible public figure who poses absolutely no flight risk, the decision to execute a high-profile airport ambush and hold him over the weekend without a warrant represents an egregious abuse of state power rather than a legitimate legal inquiry.
Meanwhile the National Organiser, Henry Nana Boakye, has rallied party faithful for an aggressive march to the EOCO headquarters today, Monday, July 13, to demand the immediate, unconditional release of the communications strategist, signaling that the opposition will no longer tolerate the state’s ongoing campaign of targeted harassment and judicial overreach against its members.
