Forty-eight Members of Parliament (MPs) have formally petitioned Speaker Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin to recall Parliament from recess, citing a string of major narcotics seizures linked to Ghana, including a 3.9-tonne cocaine bust in France, that they say amount to a national security emergency requiring urgent parliamentary oversight.

The memorandum, dated September 18, 2026, and submitted by Hon. Habib Iddrisu, First Deputy Minority Whip and MP for Tolon, invokes Article 112(3) of the 1992 Constitution and Order 53 of Parliament’s Standing Orders, both of which allow at least 15 per cent of MPs to compel the Speaker to summon an extraordinary sitting within seven days of the request.

The immediate trigger, according to the memo, is the seizure by French customs officers at the Port of Dunkirk on September 10 of nearly 3.9 metric tonnes of cocaine valued at more than US$260 million, concealed in a container of plastic waste that the MPs say had departed from Ghana. The signatories want Parliament to establish how the container was processed and exported, which port it left from, what scanning and clearance procedures applied, and which companies and institutions handled it.

But the memo frames the Dunkirk seizure as the latest in a longer pattern. The document lists five other major incidents since March 2025: a 3.3-tonne cocaine haul hidden under sand in a tipper truck at Pedu Junction, Cape Coast (estimated street value over US$350 million); a second 120-slab cocaine consignment intercepted on the Takoradi–Cape Coast highway; 866 parcels of suspected cocaine found concealed in sacks of gari at a Tema Harbour warehouse (US$6.9 million); an unresolved case involving a Gran Canaria flight alleged to be carrying narcotics and undeclared US currency that landed at Kotoka International Airport in March 2025; the MV Sankofa, released by the Ghana Maritime Authority after paying a fraction of a nearly GH₵12 million fine without full cargo inspection, later arrested in Senegal carrying narcotics; and a 320kg methamphetamine seizure by Australian customs in June 2026, concealed in a charcoal shipment traced to Ghana.

Taken together, the MPs say, these incidents put “high-profile seizures linked to Ghana under the current administration” at well over US$1 billion in under two years.

They note pointedly that more than a year after the Pedu Junction bust, only the driver, a housemaid, and a handful of peripheral suspects have been arraigned and remain on bail, while the financiers and principal traffickers behind the shipment remain unidentified.

The memo calls for a parliamentary inquiry that could summon the Ministers for the Interior, Transport, and National Security, along with the Narcotics Control Commission, Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority, the Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Ghana Immigration Service, National Intelligence Bureau, and other security and regulatory agencies.

Among the questions posed were the extent of cooperation with French and other international authorities, the adequacy of scanning and surveillance systems at Ghana’s ports and airports, and what is being done to identify the networks behind the trafficking.

The signatories, who include senior MPs such as Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Francis Asenso-Boakye, Dominic Nitiwul, and Kingsley Nyarko, stress that the request is “not to prejudge any person or interfere with ongoing criminal investigations,” but to allow Parliament to exercise its constitutional oversight function.

Under Article 112(3), the Speaker must now summon Parliament within seven days of receiving the request. It was not immediately clear when that sitting would take place, and the Speaker’s office had not issued a public response when the request was filed.