In this image taken from video, people work at the site of a military helicopter crash in Adansi, Ghana, on August 6, 2025. HAFIZ TIJANI / AP
Ghana’s defense and environment ministers were killed in a military helicopter crash on Wednesday, August 6, the presidency said, after the air force chopper carrying three crew and five passengers came down in a forest in the south. Television station Joy News broadcast cell phone footage from the crash scene showing smoldering wreckage in a heavily forested area earlier in the day, before it was revealed that ministers Edward Omane Boamah and Ibrahim Murtala Muhammed were among the dead.
Boamah was named defense minister shortly after President John Mahama’s swearing-in in January. Muhammed, 50, was serving as the minister of environment, science and technology. He had been scheduled to attend the UN talks currently underway in Geneva aimed at hammering out a landmark global treaty on combating the scourge of plastic pollution.
Ghanaian media reported that the helicopter was on its way to an event on illegal mining, a major environmental issue in the West African country. Everyone on board was killed in the accident in the southern Ashanti region, authorities said. “The president and government extend our condolences and sympathies to the families of our comrades and the servicemen who died in service to the country,” said Mahama’s chief of staff, Julius Debrah.
The Ghanaian Armed Forces said investigations had been launched to determine the cause of the crash of the Z9 helicopter. The military had reported earlier Wednesday that an air force helicopter had dropped off the radar after taking off from Accra just after 9 am local time. It had been headed toward the town of Obuasi, northwest of the capital.
Read more Subscribers only Ghana’s VP Bawumia and former president Mahama face off in election
Ministers’ challenges
Alhaji Muniru Mohammed, Ghana’s deputy national security coordinator and former agriculture minister, was also among the dead, along with Samuel Sarpong, vice chairman of Mahama’s National Democratic Congress party. Boamah was leading Ghana’s Defense Ministry at a time when jihadist activity across its northern border in Burkina Faso has become increasingly volatile.
Read more Attack on military base in Burkina Faso reportedly leaves 50 soldiers dead
While Ghana has so far avoided a jihadist spillover from the Sahel – unlike neighbors Togo and Benin – observers have warned of increased arms trafficking and of militants from Burkina Faso crossing the porous border to use Ghana as a rear base.
Read more Subscribers only Jihadists are intensifying drone attacks in the Sahel
A medical doctor by training, Boamah’s career in government included stints as communications minister during Mahama’s previous tenure, between 2012 and 2017. Before that, he was the deputy minister for the environment. Muhammed, the environment minister, was at the helm as the country battles illegal, informal gold mining that has ravaged farmlands and contaminated water.
“Galamsey,” as the practice is locally known, has been threatening cocoa production in particular and was a major issue in the election that saw Mahama elected last year. The establishment earlier this year of the Ghana Gold Board and the banning of foreigners from the local gold trade were seen as the first concrete signs of a crackdown on the practice by the new administration.
Muhammed was a “committed environmentalist” and “deeply respected” by peers in Africa and globally, said UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen in Geneva, in a statement.
Only a few weeks ago, the minister was elected to be a member of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) in Nairobi, said Andersen. Condolence messages also came from the ECOWAS and African Union chiefs.
Boamah led a delegation to Ouagadougou in May as Ghana pursued increased diplomacy with Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – all ruled by juntas who have broken with the West African regional bloc ECOWAS. He had been set to release a book titled A Peaceful Man in an African Democracy about former president John Atta Mills, who died in 2012. President Mahama suspended all his scheduled activities for the rest of the week and declared three days of mourning starting Thursday, with all flags to be flown at half-mast, his office said.
Read more World Bank approves $300 million in funding for Ghana
Reuse this content
Source
