Ghana has cancelled ten Service Passports. The opposition says about 300 people have already travelled on diplomatic and service passports allegedly issued through the same arrangement.
That gap sits at the heart of the Ghana passport scandal, and it widened fast this month.
The paper trail starts in 2023. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs says the first Service Passports in question were issued on 3 January that year. Four were issued in 2023 in total. Six more followed in 2026, the latest in August.
The Ghana passport scandal began with two complaints. One petitioner told the ministry he paid US$29,000 in 2023. Another said he paid US$5,000 this year. Both say the money went to a syndicate.
The first petition arrived on 8 October. Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa set up an internal committee five days later.
The Ghana passport scandal turned political before the committee reported anything. On 3 November, Speaker Alban Bagbin ordered opposition MP Samuel Abu Jinapor out of Parliament after he refused to withdraw a claim that diplomatic passports were being sold. The Minority walked out with him.
A day later, NPP second vice chairman Henry Nana Boakye said close to 300 people did not qualify for the documents. He linked the issue to narcotics. “Drug cartels do not move only through ports, they move through documents,” he told a press conference. Reports so far have not shown a drugs link.
The ruling NDC sees a personal edge in the Ghana passport scandal. Majority MPs say Ablakwa turned down a request to let Boakye keep a service passport. Boakye denies asking for a favour.
On Sunday 8 November, the Ghana passport scandal finally drew an official response. The ministry said it had cancelled the ten Service Passports and told international partners.
It also interdicted two officers, Acting Director of Passports Mahama Yahaya Amantana and junior officer Alhassan Sumani. Both were referred to the police. Neither has been convicted of anything.
The ministry calls Sumani the alleged architect. It says he worked as a passport middleman, a so-called goro boy, before joining the Foreign Service on 29 November 2024. It also says the scheme predates the current government, and a retired passports director from 2023 will be investigated too.
The same day, Jinapor gave the Minority’s version, as the Ghana News Agency reported. He alleged that about 300 Ghanaians had travelled to Europe and elsewhere on diplomatic and service passports tied to a travel and tour arrangement. Some applicants, he said, were handed official titles they never held. Some of those posts do not exist.
He showed letters, redacted biodata pages, bank deposit slips and mobile money records. He also alleged that ministry staff helped some travellers through airport checks. That evidence has yet to be tested independently in public.
The two sides do not even agree on what was sold. The ministry draws a hard line: “the matters under investigations are about Service Passports and not Diplomatic Passports.” The Minority says both categories are involved. It claims diplomatic passports give visa-free entry to 62 countries and service passports to 59.
The numbers behind the Ghana passport scandal add a wrinkle. Ministry figures show 5,682 diplomatic passports issued from 2017 to 2024, about 710 a year. Since January 2025 the count is 1,944, or roughly 1,000 a year. Service Passports held steady at around 400 a year. Raw totals prove nothing alone. They do explain why the Minority wants every approval since January 2025 reviewed.
The Ghana passport scandal is awkward for a government that promised a tighter grip. In March 2025 the ministry said 791 official passports had not been returned by former holders. It later cancelled hundreds. Now its own passport office faces a police referral.
The government answered on 9 November. Fred Duhoe, the ministry’s media relations officer, said the syndicate forged the former Chief Director’s signature and sent fake approval letters straight to the Acting Director of Passports, GhanaWeb reported. Presidential aide Dr Samuel Ayeh said a suspect confessed to the forgery on tape. He said the committee report should be public next week.
Those are government claims, not findings, and the Ghana passport scandal already has plenty of claims on both sides. The Minority says some approval letters were signed on behalf of the minister. Investigators will have to reconcile the two stories.
The Minority also distrusts the committee. Its deputy ranking member, Nana Asafo Adjei Ayeh, objects to the chair, Ambassador Alexander Grant Ntrakwa. “We all know that Grant is the Minister’s friend,” he said. He also objects that findings go to the minister first.
So the Minority wants a parliamentary ad hoc committee under Article 103, with power to summon Ablakwa himself. Meanwhile the Office of the Special Prosecutor said on 9 November that it had opened its own investigation. It says it will trace payments and examine how approvals were made.
Three inquiries now cover the Ghana passport scandal: the ministry’s, the police’s and the Special Prosecutor’s. Parliament may add a fourth.
Under the Passports and Travel Certificates Act of 1967, diplomatic and service passports are for people on official state business. That is the test. The Ghana passport scandal asks whether those rules were enforced or whether access to the documents could simply be bought.
Ten is a number a minister can announce. Three hundred is a number investigators must test. A passport is only paper until a border officer trusts it, and that trust is what was allegedly for sale.
