Petition asks Mahama to suspend $1.3bn Sentuo Airport Garden City over security concerns

A private citizen has asked President John Dramani Mahama to halt construction of the US$1.3 billion Sentuo Airport Garden City until security agencies assess the project's proximity to military and aviation installations.

Samson Asaki Awingobit, writing as a concerned citizen, says the development at 10 Giffard Road in the Airport Residential Area needs a second look. His petition comes days after President Mahama cut the sod for the project on September 15.

Awingobit argues that Giffard Road sits within Accra's military-security corridor, near Burma Camp and Air Force Base areas. He says the scale of the project raises questions ordinary real estate would not: 582 apartments, a 600-room hotel and a 2,500-capacity conference facility.

He cites four risks, including that high-rise buildings could offer elevated vantage points over sensitive sites; that the facility's surveillance, access-control and data systems could be operated by people outside Ghana's security oversight; that occupants and corporate tenants may not be adequately vetted; and that proximity to Accra International Airport could ease an escape by someone posing a threat. He stresses that he is not alleging any of this will happen but wants the authorities to test whether it could.

The petition lists ten demands, including immediate suspension of construction pending review; a multi-agency assessment involving the Ministry of Defence, the Ghana Armed Forces, National Security, the Police, the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority and Ghana Airports Company Limited; a land-use review of height, density and orientation; a counter-surveillance assessment; beneficial-ownership and source-of-funds checks on the developers; tenant vetting; and Ghanaian oversight of the complex's security systems, with findings shared with the relevant parliamentary committees.

Awingobit is emphatic that this is about location, not nationality. "This petition is not anti-China. It is not anti-investment," he writes, adding that the investment is welcome but that it is easier to ask hard questions now than to correct a problem once the buildings are up. The petition is copied to the Chief of Staff, the Ministers for Defence and Interior, the National Security Coordinator, the Chief of the Defence Staff, the IGP, the heads of the GCAA and GACL, and three parliamentary committee chairs. At the sod-cutting, President Mahama said Ghana is open for investment, and Sentuo says the project will create more than 3,000 jobs, mostly for Ghanaians.