Ghana's parliamentary Minority has asked for an independent audit of the GH¢49.72 million the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spent repatriating Ghanaians from South Africa, and has called on Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa to resign, Graphic Online reports.
The demand was made at a press conference in Accra on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, where the caucus said the minister's handling of the evacuation had damaged the standing of his office.
The operation brought home 1,964 Ghanaians between May 27 and September 4, 2026, after a fresh wave of xenophobic attacks in South Africa, according to Graphic Online.
Why it matters
The dispute turns on how nearly GH¢50 million in public money was used during an emergency operation, and it has moved quickly from a documents row into a direct confrontation between the opposition and a senior minister.
The Minority's case rests on what it describes as gaps in flight records, inconsistencies in payment registers and duplicate entries in the paperwork released by the ministry. It argues that only an outside investigation can settle whether the money was properly accounted for.
Mr Ablakwa rejects any suggestion of financial wrongdoing and says the spending is accounted for. He has himself asked for an independent audit, though one that would cover evacuation exercises going back to 2017 rather than only the South Africa operation.
What the Minority says it found
The documents at the centre of the row were released by the ministry in response to a Right to Information request. According to Graphic Online, the Minority says those papers contain discrepancies that need further examination.
Samuel Abdulai Jinapor, the Ranking Member on Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters that the concerns include payment records without signatures, missing supporting receipts, and duplicate entries. The caucus has also questioned the reintegration and transport allowances paid to returnees.
Some evacuees, the Minority says, claim they did not receive the sums recorded against their names.
"Given the gravity of these revelations and in order to ensure an impartial investigation into the matter, we call on the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Honourable Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, to resign immediately," Mr Jinapor said, adding that the minister's handling of the exercise had brought his high office into disrepute.
Mr Jinapor said the questions raised by the caucus had not been resolved by the explanations the minister has offered, which is why the Minority is pressing for an audit.
Pressure and counter-pressure
The Minority has set out a sequence of escalating steps. It says it will ask President John Dramani Mahama to dismiss the minister if he does not step down, and it has threatened to bring a vote of censure against him in Parliament if its demand goes unmet.
The minister's response has been to deny impropriety and to widen the scope of any scrutiny. By calling for a review of evacuations carried out since 2017, he has sought to place the South Africa operation alongside earlier exercises rather than treating it as an isolated case.
A separate fight over the evacuees' voices
The row has also drawn in the returnees themselves. On Monday, October 26, a group of evacuees held a press conference at which they alleged that some opposition figures had tried to coach them to speak against the government, according to Graphic Online. Reporting by GBC Ghana Online quoted returnees rejecting claims of sleaze in the government's rescue effort.
Mr Jinapor denied that the Minority had paid, engaged or persuaded any evacuee to speak publicly. "Let me place on record that at no point in time did the Minority engage, pay, and/or convince any of these people," he said.
He offered an alternative account of why some returnees came forward: they had decided to speak after discovering a difference between the allowances they believed they were entitled to and the amounts they say they actually received.
The exchange has added a second layer to a dispute that began over ledgers and flight manifests, with each side now questioning the other's conduct rather than only the figures.
What to watch
The immediate question is whether the minister bows to the resignation call or whether the Minority carries through on its threat to seek his removal through the President or a censure motion in Parliament. The wider question is who conducts any audit, and how far back it reaches.
