Government communications team member, Eric Okyei Baffour has asked Ghana’s foreign affairs authorities in Italy to stop issuing Ghana’s passports to, especially Nigerians whom he says are giving Ghana a bad name abroad.
In an Interview with Accra-based Atinka TV, he revealed that some of the civil servants at Ghana’s embassy in Italy allegedly take bribes to issue passports to Nigerians illegally.
According to him, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs must investigate those criminalities and prosecute culprits who are involved in such illegalities.
“I just came from Italy two weeks ago and there are so many criminal activities going on at Ghana’s Embassy in Rome Italy where officials working there take bribes to issue Ghanaian passports to people who are not Ghanaians most of them are Nigerians who get involved in criminalities using Ghana’s passport.”
“I have petitioned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs last year, and I have been told there is a cartel around the civil servants at Ghana’s embassy in Rome and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ghana. Recently they have doored a program in Italy which will do a door to door services in issuing Ghanaian passports to Ghanaian citizens in Italy, is all part of the criminal activities they planned in exhorting money from non-citizens and giving them Ghanaian passports in return,” he said.
He stressed that the door-to-door services for passports create chaos at various registration centers because the money they collect from the door-to-door services registration doesn’t go through the electronic system but goes through the pockets of some individuals working at Ghana’s embassy in Italy.
It comes on the back of widespread social media reports that some foreign nationals living in Italy and other Gulf States have Ghanaian passports. He further disclosed that the Italian government at the moment cannot authenticate birth, marriage certificates, and other legal documents from Ghana because of the involvement of foreign nationals.
Eric Okyei Baffour tasked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to conduct proper investigations into the said allegation and take appropriate measures to deal with the situation.
He reiterated calls on Ghana’s embassy in Rome to desist from engaging in activities that undermine the integrity of the Ghanaian passport.
Eric Okyei Baffour urged the Ghanaian government to check such acts because Ghanaians may lose the reputation they have in abroad. They will tag us frustraters like some Nigerians. Italians know Ghanaians are hardworking,” he said.