The presidential jet controversy isn’t about planes it’s about politics — Sulemana Braimah
Every few years, Ghana has the same conversation about the same aircraft, and every time, it produces more heat than light, more partisan point-scoring than practical resolution. The Media Foundation for West Africa’s Executive Director thinks it is time the country finally grew out of it.
Sulemana Braimah, speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on Monday, March 16, made a pointed call for Ghana’s political class to set aside the posturing that has defined the presidential aircraft debate for decades and confront the underlying question with the honesty it deserves: does Ghana have a safe, serviceable aircraft for presidential travel, and if not, what is the country going to do about it?
“I think as a country, we just have to be bold to say, ‘Look, we’ve gotten to the point where we need a befitting aircraft for state officials who would have to travel for purposes of whatever is to the benefit of the state,'” he said.
The immediate backdrop to his remarks is the controversy surrounding President John Dramani Mahama’s use of a private jet belonging to his brother, businessman Ibrahim Mahama, during an official trip to South Korea, an arrangement that has drawn criticism from the opposition NPP and reignited questions about the state of Ghana’s presidential aircraft. But for Braimah, focusing on that specific trip misses the larger and more enduring point.
He acknowledged that concerns raised about the cost of chartering private aircraft during the previous administration were legitimate, the figures involved were striking by any measure.
“The challenge with the previous regime, I believe, was the nature of aircraft and the cost the state was carrying, about 14,000 to 15,000 dollars an hour. That is extraordinarily significant,” he said.
But he was equally critical of the way those concerns were framed and weaponized in public debate, creating the impression, he argued, that a perfectly airworthy presidential jet was being deliberately bypassed in favor of expensive luxury travel, which he suggested was an oversimplification at best.
“Yes, we admit it was quite expensive, but the impression was created as though the president had deliberately decided to avoid a well-functioning aircraft that was in a pristine state and rather opted for expensive, luxurious chartered flights. I think the problem has been the politics,” he said.
His scrutiny did not spare the current administration. He directed a specific challenge at Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, who during the previous government had been among the most vocal critics of presidential air travel arrangements, at times suggesting the presidential jet was serviceable and its non-use therefore unjustifiable. If that was true in 2024, Braimah asked, what has changed?
“If the presidential jet was indeed in such a pristine state as he talked about, and this was just in 2024, what has happened all of a sudden?” he asked, adding: “At some point, we need him to tell Ghanaians whether he was simply doing politics with the situation.”
It is a question that cuts to the heart of the MFWA director’s broader frustration, that Ghana’s political culture has a habit of treating matters of genuine governance as opportunities for partisan advantage, leaving the substantive issues permanently unresolved.
He drew a direct line from the current impasse to a remarkably similar controversy that played out during the Kufuor era, when strong opposition, led at the time by the NDC, greeted the procurement of the Falcon aircraft. Former President Kufuor, Braimah recalled, responded with a line that has aged with some irony: that Ghanaians appeared to know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. The same aircraft was later delivered in 2010 under the NDC government and went on to be used extensively for presidential travel.
The cycle, Braimah suggested, keeps repeating because the politics never stops long enough for the practical decision to be made.
His prescription is straightforward: be honest, be practical, and be done with it. Ghana is not too poor to provide its head of state with a safe aircraft for official travel. The resources are there, buried, admittedly, under layers of waste that a more disciplined government could recover.
“The waste that is happening, even under this government, if half of it is cut, we can easily buy a decent aircraft for the state,” he said.
And on the matter of the opposition’s current indignation, he was clear-eyed but unbothered.
“NPP at this stage would be right if they say, ‘You guys were criticising us, now you want to go for it.’ But again, that is still politics.”
His closing message was the one he had been building toward from the start.
“For me, the politics is enough. Let us confront the issues, deal with them and settle it once and for all.”
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