Private legal practitioner and public-affairs commentator Austin Kwabena Brako-Powers has questioned the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) commitment to accountability in the controversy surrounding Ghana’s evacuation exercise in South Africa.
He argued that although the opposition party deserves commendation for drawing attention to concerns surrounding the exercise, its subsequent demands suggest that the matter is increasingly being politicised rather than pursued in the interest of accountability.
Speaking on TV3’s The Big Issues on November 10, 2026, Mr Brako-Powers said he initially believed the NPP’s intervention was not an attempt to engage in the usual political exchanges but had genuine concerns about transparency in the expenditure.
He, however, said his assessment had changed following what he described as the party’s excessive handling of the matter.
“I commended the NPP for flagging the issue, but I reject their call for a private audit firm to investigate it,” he stated.
According to him, Ghana already has an established public auditing institution in the Audit Service, which has the constitutional mandate and professional capacity to examine public expenditure and establish whether there were financial irregularities.
He expressed confidence that the Audit Service would conduct a credible examination of the expenditure associated with the evacuation exercise, insisting that there was no compelling reason to bypass the institution in favour of a private audit firm.
Mr Brako-Powers accused the NPP of stretching the controversy to what he described as a ridiculous level, questioning whether the party was still genuinely interested in securing accountability.
“It appears they no longer want accountability. I initially thought it wasn’t politics as usual, but I now see that it is politics as usual,” he said.
He also noted that the Office of the Special Prosecutor’s (OSP) decision to investigate the matter had introduced a new dimension to the controversy, particularly regarding the need to establish whether any corruption-related offences occurred in the execution of the exercise.
He maintained that the evacuation exercise must be examined objectively, with the appropriate institutions allowed to perform their respective mandates. He stressed that commending the humanitarian intervention while demanding accountability for public expenditure were not mutually exclusive positions.
