Accra’s Floods: Nkrumah’s engineers knew, the rest did not listen – Napoleon Ato Kittoe writes

A Ghanaian resident in the United States, Sebastian Garbrah, had this to say after watching the latest floods in Accra:

“My late father was a Civil Engineer, Survey/Quantities at the State Construction Corporation [SCC] for over 35 years before retiring. He pointed out all the flood zones in Accra to me — places where no structures were to be erected. Chief among them was the Odaw River, Odawna.

He said the only structures permitted at that time were the Accra Workers College building and the TUC. Both were built on strong concrete pillars 15 feet tall. It was a location Nkrumah insisted he wanted those two buildings. The Israeli engineers who worked hand-in-hand with SCC at that time had to respect Nkrumah’s directive.

Workers College and TUC never get flooded, if you have noticed. They were built in a flood zone, but they were well-fortified. The rest of that enclave, from Tesano through Adabraka Official Town to Agbogbloshie, was also a flood zone. No one was supposed to erect structures around the Odaw River. They did not listen. What do we see today?”

My Response
Most duty bearers are not working. That is my observation. I went to Cape Coast last Saturday and passed through Kaneshie, Odorkor, and Mallam towards Weija. The whole area is unfit for a capital city. Gaping road potholes, I was told, have remained since ‘Adam’.

Extending to Korle Gonno, Mamprobi, Chorkor, and Agege — there is little or no development. The beauty of Accra is confined to about five suburbs within the centre, brightened by modern institutional buildings. Accra’s problems are the magnified situation everywhere. People are not working.

I wonder if officials even go round to inspect the cities.

Remediation must start now:
1. Roads: Start overnight asphalt works to fix critical arteries.
2. Sanitation: Multiply waste collection workers. Street littering indiscipline has taken a firm foothold.
3. Planning: Regulate and stop the haphazard placement of kiosks and containers.
4. Security: Improve street lighting across the city.
5. Space: Put a halt to the unbridled sale of lands in the capital. Everywhere is filled. How can we build a city like this?
6. Leadership: We must have political leaders who are not interested in second terms, to pull the bull by the horns.