Are Ghanaians foreigners in their own country of origin?
This is the repeated question that was heard from the mouths of the Ghanaians who were visiting the country last Thursday, 7th. of August 2014.
On Thursday, Ghanaians visiting the country got pissed off by the behavior of some immigration officers at the Kotoka International airport.
At the arrival hall of the airport, the passengers joined their lines for entry protocol according to their citizenship status. Ghanaians holding foreign passports joined the Other Nationals line. Three planes had arrived at the same time on that day, so there was congestion at the arrival hall. Despite the congestion everybody waited patiently for the immigration protocol.
The scuffle started when two of the junior immigration officers, started to rearrange the lines. A passenger travelling from Holland suspected that, they were trying to help the white-passengers to by-pass the Ghanaian passengers. As a white lady took advantage of the new line the junior officer had created, a Ghanaian asked her where she was going, and the white lady replied that, an officer had asked her to come forward. This made the Ghanaian passengers very annoyed and started asking the question repeatedly, “Are we foreigners in our own country of origin?” One of them said that, we are foreigners in the whiteman’s country and here in Ghana, our own people treat us like foreigners, so where is our dignity?
The immigration officers were very adamant and kept on making sure that the whites were served first from behind the lines. But funny enough, they tried to deny that fact.
What broke the carmel’s back was that, passengers checking at the Diplomats desk had all finished the entry protocol, so one of the officers asked families with children to use the diplomats desk. Suddenly and surprisingly, about seven Chinese were allowed to pass by without any immigration protocol. So a man and his wife with four children sarcastically asked an officer standing by “how can you allow people who are going to practice Galamsey and destroy our lands and waters just go like that?” As the junior officer tried to explain that, those Chinese applied for entry visa, so if they were finished, they needed not stand in the line.
No sooner had the junior officer finished with this explanation, than a senior immigration officer who seemed to be the one in charge asked the family with four children to go back and join the other lines again. The man of the family explained that an officer asked families with children to use that line, but the senior officer wanted to show his powers, so insisted that the family should go back and ordered the officers in the diplomats desk not serve that family. As the family moved forward to the desk, the officers at the Diplomats counter also refused to serve them, since they did not have the orders. A Ghanaian from Holland with a name, Edusei and others said that they would not “allow that nonsense to go on”. So they insisted that the family should be served by the officers in the Diplomats desk. One of the officers who seemed to be the operations officer also joined Mr. Edusei to press that the family is served by the Diplomats desk. This officer seemed to understand the frustrations of the Ghanaians, because he acted differently from the rest of the senior officers.

By
Onuapa Francis
Radio Akwaaba FM, Mannheim, Germany
0049 152 1897 9681 or 00233 554 504 863