A bomb scare at Ghana’s Kotoka International Airport and a campaign for President Nana Akufo-Addo to boycott the next Dubai expo in protest over a flight ban by Emirates Airline are two of the stories making headline in the Ghanaian press on Thursday.
The Graphics says a suspicious bag was found at the Kotoka International Airport on Tuesday, prompting the airport authorities to call in state security to deal with the situation.
It says after the bag was retrieved by the security operatives, it was taken for further investigations, the outcome of which would be announced in due course.
Meanwhile the same newspaper is reporting that the Ranking Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has urged President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to boycott the next Dubai Expo in protest of the decision of Emirates airline to suspend indefinitely the entry of travellers from 10 African countries including Ghana.
The North Tongu Member of Parliament (MP) also wants African leaders and the African Union to denounce the decision and give the United Arab Emirates an ultimatum to reverse the suspension or face reciprocal action.
Mr Ablakwa in a Facebook post said the decision of Emirates which came into effect on December 28, 2021, is the most discriminatory, offensive, senseless and retrogressive step given that
He posted: “The other nauseating irony is that daily active cases in the UAE have now crossed 1,800, far higher than Ghana’s 1,264 new cases, and yet UAE citizens can travel to Ghana whereas Ghanaians cannot travel to the UAE.
“I urge African Presidents and the African Union to immediately denounce this shameless discriminatory policy and to proceed by giving UAE authorities an ultimatum to reverse this backward ban, failing which I strongly expect African countries to reciprocate in good measure, and in addition withdraw en masse from the ongoing Dubai Expo which closes on March 31, 2022.
“I should hope President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana would also in protest reconsider his plans to lead a Ghanaian delegation to the Dubai Expo on March 8, 2022.
“African nations cannot continue to be soft targets in these dark schemes that perpetuate high-level international racism”.
The airline on December 28, 2021, said passengers on direct and transit flights from Ghana, Angola, Guinea, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Zambia and Zimbabwe will not be permitted to travel to Dubai from December 28, 2021.
The Graphic also reports that for the fifth consecutive day, the Ghana Health Service has announced a daily increase of over 1,000 new cases of COVID-19.
The latest figures as of December 25, 2021, indicate that Ghana recorded 1,074 cases – the lowest daily increase over a five-day period – bringing the number of active cases to 9,534.
During that period, the highest daily increase of 1,324 was recorded on December 22 when the country had 6,361 active cases and a total of 1,277 deaths.
The country also has a test positivity rate of 6.7% from a total of 1,205,152 tests of which 141,295 were positive and a total of 1,287 deaths from the illness.
GIK/APA