Ghana has no plans to deport Nigerians- Mahama

By Emmanuella Sarfo-Ntow August 4, 2025

President John Dramani Mahama has sought to ease tensions among Nigerian nationals in Ghana and the Nigerian government, assuring a special envoy sent by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that there will be no mass deportations.

The unrest, according to President Mahama, stemmed from the resurfacing of a 2013 video featuring an “Igbo king” discussing land acquisition, which was widely misinterpreted as a current event.

The President dismissed the incident as “a bit of a storm in a teacup,” emphasising that Ghanaian law governs the establishment of traditional councils, making such external claims irrelevant.

In a meeting with Nigeria’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Mahama reassured the Nigerian delegation that Ghana had no intention of expelling Nigerian citizens en masse. He reiterated the shared history and interdependence between the two nations, affirming Ghana’s commitment to ECOWAS protocols.

“We are siblings of the same parents, and our destinies are tied together,” Mahama said, recalling past mass deportations that happened in Ghana in the 1960s and Nigeria in the 1980s.

“I think that that is a part of our past, and it’s an unfortunate past that we want to put behind us, and I believe that none of our two countries should mass deport our citizens ever again.”

“We are members of the ECOWAS, and we have the ECOWAS protocol that allows our citizens to travel freely between our countries.”

The President clarified that while some individuals may have engaged in criminal activity, such cases would be handled through due legal processes, not collective punishment.

He stressed that foreign residents involved in crime would face individual legal repercussions, not blanket expulsion.

Minister Odumegwu-Ojukwu conveyed the “anxieties” in Nigeria over the viral video and fears of deportations, which had sparked emergency sessions in Nigeria’s National Assembly and prompted calls for relatives in Ghana to return home.

However, she commended President Mahama for de-escalating the situation, noting that the fears of widespread unrest upon their arrival in Accra were unfounded.