Two Nigerians in court for forgery of Ghanaian passports
Two Nigerian nationals on Wednesday appeared before an Accra circuit court charged with forgery of Ghanaian passport forms and the use of Ghanaian names on the application documents.
Michael Uchenna Chinyeaka, aka Abass Mustapha, a businessman, pleaded guilty to two of the five counts while Eric Nwadili, aka Mustapha Issaka, pleaded not guilty to all the five counts.
The presiding judge, Mrs Patience Tetteh-Mills, deferred sentence to August 24, 2011 and remanded them into police custody.
They were charged with five counts of forgery of official application documents and deceit by making false entries of names on the Republic of Ghana passport forms.
The prosecutor, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) George Abavelim, told the court that intelligence gathered indicated that some Nigerians and other nationals come to Ghana purposely to acquire Ghanaian passports and travel with them and tarnish the image of Ghana.
He said this information had come to the notice of security agencies which took measures to apprehend those suspects.
ASP Abavelim said earlier this month, Chinyeaka and Nwadili bought application forms of the Republic of Ghana passport which they completed with their assumed Ghanaian names of Abass Mustapha and Mustapha Issaka respectively and submitted them to be processed.
He said during a routine check by the vetting officer, it was detected that the two accused persons were of Nigerian origin.
When questioned in a Ghanaian language, the two accused persons could not communicate with the officer in charge, hence a report was made and they were arrested.
During interrogation the two accused persons confessed that they were both from Anabra State in Nigeria and that they wanted the Ghana passport to enable them to travel to China and Dubai to buy goods.
They said when they used their Nigerian passport they were refused visa.
He said when they were searched it was revealed that they had Federal Republic of Nigeria passports.
Source: GNA