Maritime Authority rejects Aboagye's claim that Ghana's vessel monitoring is down

Pinned summary · as of 16:03

The Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA) has pushed back against Dennis Miracles Aboagye, who said on two television programmes that nobody is watching vessels in Ghanaian waters. In a statement issued on Tuesday, 22 September, the regulator said its monitoring system is working and urged the public to ignore the assertion.

What we know

• Dennis Miracles Aboagye said in television appearances on Tuesday that Ghana's system for watching vessels at sea was not functioning and that ships in national waters were going unmonitored.
• The GMA rejected those remarks in a formal statement, calling them untrue, deceptive and out of step with how maritime surveillance actually runs in Ghana. It said its vessel-tracking system covering Ghana's waters is working.
• According to the GMA, it uses maritime domain awareness tools to keep watch over vessels in Ghana's maritime domain around the clock.
• The authority said the same system helps to safeguard offshore oil and gas installations, pipelines and undersea cables.
• The GMA also said set procedures are followed to track ships, check who they are and whether they comply with rules, and to support navigation safety and environmental security.
• The authority told citizens to set the claim aside and look to its own official announcements on maritime security.

What's disputed / unconfirmed

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  Onua Online reported that, according to the GMA's account of his remarks, Mr Aboagye said the high-seas surveillance system had been out of action for months, so the authority was operating blind. No other report gives this detail, and the GMA denies it.
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  Onua Online said Mr Aboagye spoke while commenting on recent drug busts: a French port seizure of almost 3.9 tonnes of cocaine valued at €225 million, in a container that came from Ghana, and 866 parcels of suspected cocaine discovered at Tema Harbour. These details come from that report alone and have not been confirmed elsewhere.
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  Onua Online also reported that Mr Aboagye argued the alleged failure of the system was hurting Ghana's ability to track illegal activity at sea; the authority disputes that the system has failed.

Why it matters for Ghana

Ghana's ports and offshore oil and gas fields are central to trade and government revenue, so public confidence in how ships are tracked affects importers, exporters and energy workers. The exchange comes as reports of large drug seizures linked to Ghanaian shipments raise questions about port and sea security. The GMA's public rebuttal puts its own claims about round-the-clock monitoring on the record for citizens and partners to test.