Accra does not make sense. Accra is broken. Accra is mad. Why is Accra mad? Oh, go figure! Haven’t you taken a look lately? Chaos galore! Lawlessness galore! A free-for all regime! Yet, we have all the bye-laws needed to run a city but they are not enforced.
You want to put a kiosk somewhere to sell whatever? Go ahead; have fun with it. At some point, any of the two D-Words – Decongestion and/or Demolition might chase after you. But the dust will quickly settle and you could move right back. You want to sell luscious yummy roasted ripe plantains over a funky gutter? Oh, just do what floats your boat. You want to throw your garbage, regardless of the quantity – sachet water, a bag of ‘bola’ – onto a street? Who can stop you? No one! You want to build your concrete house in water-ways? Go right ahead. Drivers are mad too; especially so! There are no elders in this town.
With the above as a backdrop, and the horrifying devastation of biblical proportions with earthquakes in the capital city of Haiti two weeks running, I am very excited about the recently announced Millennium City Project for Accra. We must give this initiative a chance, regardless of anyone’s negative feelings toward the Accra Metropolitan Assembly and its lush-bearded
Mayor, Alfred Nee Oko Vanderpuje. Let me state my case.
Accra’s madness is currently at a fever pitch and is brought into sharper focus when you observe the layers of development under and over the layers of under-development. It makes me wonder if the gods are crazy! Nothing makes sense. Accra cannot continue like this. The madness must stop. Now! If the status quo and/or the degeneration does not cease, imagine 5, 10, 20, or 30 years from now! If nothing changes, Accra will one-day one-day unravel.
We should not wait to become home to the unspeakable horrors of Haiti, the poorest country in the western Hemisphere, the Africa outside Africa, where poverty is so desperate and ugly and filthy that it can make you speechless and wanna cry; Where governance has long broken down, making the country win the accolade of a failed state.
Accra is in an earthquake-prone zone too. So imagine what would happen to Accra if the earth sneezes – etsssieen – and an earthquake comes a-licking? We’ll be buried under rubble, with life and death blending into one horrendous whole.
For the most part, the people of Haiti are our kith and kin – the confused descendants of slaves who were dumped on an island to labour in vain for slave masters, and who, long after the fact of liberation, have not figured out how to run their own affairs. Haiti gained independence in 1804, the first Black country anywhere in the world to do so. Ghana was the first African country to gain independence. The similarities are too eerie to catalogue.
That’s why we must give the Millennium City Project a chance. It’s OK if we can’t pronounce millennium. You might pronounce it as ‘miririum’ or ‘milliniom’ and no one would put you into prison for funky pronunciation. Millennium is a statement about having arrived. If this project does not work out, we are toast and Accra will surely unravel.
Last year, my work took me to a fascinating ingenious state-of-the-art development project in a forgotten part of the country, which is only one hour drive from Kumasi. It is dubbed the Millennium Villages Project (MVP); located at Bonsaaso, a leading cocoa producing part of the country. This project aims at changing the depressing circumstances of the inhabitants of a cluster of what has from time immemorial, been a deprived, poverty-stricken villages. The project applies science, as well as tried and tested best practices to improve the living conditions of the people.
As I got closer to the community, I witnessed the magic of MVP. In several meetings with the residents, I heard joy and hope because of the interventions of MVP. Politicians and governments had failed them over and over again. They go to them for votes then move on in complete disregard of their needs. They had no health care facilities, no schools beyond the basic, no motorable roads, no electricity, and no pipe borne water. In short, they had nothing.
Entered MVP! In just a period of three years, hope has replaced hopelessness and a dying community is rising from the dull ashes of national snobbishness. Step-by-step, little-by-little, lives are being changed. The human condition of the residents of the cluster of villages is already showing improvement through the implementation of measures to lovingly and tenderly guide them.
The successes are many – still counting. A health care facility, ambulance service, improved agricultural practices, a school feeding programme – and these are not connected with any national programmes of similar names.
What’s the relevance of the MVP to Accra, our mad house of a capital city? The same concept that informs the efforts to improve rural communities might be applied to Accra by the same consortium led by The Earth Institute of Columbia University of the USA. Their strategies are working for the Bonsaaso villages so I’m hopeful that if we follow through, it would work out for Accra, madness and all.
The path Accra has embarked on is not sustainable. Accra needs a major intervention. Accra needs redemption. This city has nurtured its madness for a long time. This is a dysfunctional city par excellence, way beyond understanding. Modern trappings like house numbers and street names are foreign.
Accra is over-grown with a lawless population. Accra is exploding at the seams. The residents need drastic behavioural change in all aspects of city life. Accra has become ungovernable. Accra is crying desperately for sanity, for healing of the madness. Even Dr Akwasi Osei of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital will excuse himself. Understandably so!
Kumasi is already mad. Kwame Nkrumah will not recognize his well-planned well-built harbour city of Tema if he dares come out of his plush grave. Sekondi-Takoradi will become mad as petrol-dollars pour in. Tamale is tottering in madness. Mid-size towns are catching the madness flu. Our cities and towns are not breathing right.
Garbage piles up and we have no clue of how to manage the waste that is a natural offshoot of human existence. Plastic waste is choking us. Our gutters are a national shame. We don’t treat excreta. Accra, Sekondi-Takoradi and other coastal towns violate international protocols by dumping excreta directly into the Atlantic Ocean. Out of shame, Accra has nicknamed its liquid waste dumping site “Lavender Hill.”
Without the combination of a well-coordinated, incisive, surgical and meticulous intervention, Accra will implode – one day. As the capital city goes, so the country. The Millennium City Project might be a blessing from heaven. And, I can’t wait to experience heaven here on earth if at all possible. God is! But the journey will be tough. To change such a broken city will not be a walk in the park so gird your loins to be annoyed. Inconveniences galore! AMA should not disappoint us – again!
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