Lawlessness galore - The nation’s predicament

Ghana is an indisciplined country, said a former Chief of Defence Staff, and in a middle income country with such wide inequalities, it becomes a recipe for disaster.

Why is it so? Ghana has all the beautifully crafted laws on our statutes which should ensure that we all do the right thing but none of the laws are enforced and everybody dares the system and does what they want.

It has nothing to do with attitude but lawlessness.

The same Ghanaian who will dare the system in Ghana enters another country, Togo, and he or she will behave and conform to what they do in Togo. The Ghanaian in Ghana is another creature altogether compared to the Ghanaian outside where laws are enforced and enforcement officers do not short change the system.

If push comes to shove, the Ghanaian knows that money can change hands at many levels and he will get away even with murder as was heard in Anas' work on the Judiciary where goats were exchanged for an armed robber's release.

So why are laws not enforced in Ghana? I have heard a senior law enforcement officer state that they do not get any briefing whatsoever on the many laws that are passed and presumably do not know of the laws but that notwithstanding, most of the acts of lawlessness are public order acts and affronts to commonsense and decency and do not need any understanding of the law.

For purposes of this article, I will restrict myself to the areas of roads and transportation, the built up area, sanitation and environmental pollution and will share a thought on water pollution. It is in these chosen areas that any visitor to Ghana will conclude that Ghana is indeed a lawless country.

Roads and transportation

I do not know who has informed motorcyclists and recently, tricyclists, that they are not bound by any traffic regulations. In the past two or three years and with the advent of okada, all motorcyclists, including foreigners and tricyclists have refused to obey traffic regulations and ride on the roads as if they are the principal road users and that their four legged compatriots are second rate.

Apart from not obeying traffic lights, they ride in between vehicles causing accidents and colliding with another illegality that no one is able to do anything about, street vendors or what I described in a previous article, 'shopping on the go'. They drive on pavements and in some very daring instances, ride in the opposite direction.

Bicycle riders have also joined the latter craze. All of this is happening while they are not wearing helmets. The latest is those on the two legged variety riding and using mobile phones. It does not come anymore stupid than that. Motorcycle accidents have increased exponentially and some of the injuries are horrendous.

The introduction of the small vehicles as commercial vehicles has also made the road more dangerous. I had to ask one such driver if he thought his vehicle was made of plastic or rubber. They seem to cross other vehicles at angles that will defy mathematicians, show no respect for traffic lights, literally hop on pavements and do a dance around a traffic light just to get away as if they are the only ones in a hurry, some of these in the full glare of the increasingly visible police officers.

Nothing gets done about the activities on our roads and that has allowed otherwise respectable motorists to join the act. A very interesting event happened to me and best illustrates the point. Driving on the Achimota-Circle road, I stopped at the Avenor traffic light when the light changed to red. Immediately I stopped, a trotro Sprinter vehicle drove into my rear. When I got out, the driver said he thought I was going to go through the red light so he did not make any attempt to stop.

Then there is the issue of foreign number plate vehicles and of course, the perennial issue of drivers of unregistered vehicles who are all doing their own thing on the roads.

The least we talk about the trotro drivers and conditions of their vehicles, even with valid road worthy certificates on our roads, the better. Such is the state of affairs on our roads. Other issues include the drains or lack of them, speeding on the roads, the absence of street lights, and the lack of will to resolve any of these issues other than the wanton collection of monies by law enforcement officers make our roads dangerous and unsafe.

The built up area

Poor planning and lack of respect for planning regulations has led to building in watercourses, absence, poor and inadequate drains and a littering of kiosks everywhere. Is it surprising there are illegal connections for water and electricity draining the two utility companies, some with the complicity of staff of Ghana Water Company and the Electricity Company of Ghana. Sadly, this is not only in Accra but all the other cities and increasingly in our towns and villages.

Accra and most of our cities have become concrete jungles. Most homes have been concreted and the green fields that surrounded our cities and towns and served as water holding lands have all been sold out to property developers and built up. Storm drains and gutters are inadequate and poorly built and the few have become silted from erosion of top soil and also clogged by litter mostly non biodegradable plastics.

So when it rains, water from the highlands of Aburi and the surrounds trip off and gather in pace towards the city of Accra. It adds up to Accra's water that flows off the concrete pavements in homes and overflow the storm drains and gutters and lead to flooding.

The events of June 3 in 2015 and the effects of the rains cannot be easily resolved without going back to the drawing board while engaging in palliative solutions to mitigate the immediate problem.

We must invest and create job opportunities in rural Ghana to reduce or even reverse the unilateral migration. If nothing is happening in our rural areas, then the young with energy and willingness and eagerness to work will even walk to the cities.

These are the same persons who trek to Libya and risk their lives on those dangerous dinghies or boats for greener pasture in Europe. What proportion of investments take place in rural Ghana? None and yet the population in the cities have exceeded any acceptable levels and created all the slums and with it all the difficulties that we face today.

The demand for a square centimetre of land in Accra and any of the cities in Ghana have fuelled the issue of land guards, dual or triple sale of the same piece of land and all the accompanying problems of indiscipline and lawlessness. Accra must be decongested and it is my view that the management of Accra has become so hydra-headed that like Nigeria and Lagos, Ghana needs a new capital.

Sanitation and environmental pollution

Ghana is filthy and many are ignorant of the effects of filth on our collective psyche. Humans generate each day half a kilogramme of filth per individual which must be dealt with in every way possible to ensure cleanliness. There is no justification for the filth created to come back and haunt or cause disease to the people who make it. In a nation of more than 28 million persons, are we ready and capable of making good 13.85 million kilogrammes of filth each day? The answer is of course a big no and so the filth decays before our very eyes emitting foul odour, disease-riddled flies and leachate capable of killing free ranging chickens. What a people!



Sanitation must be the collective effort of everyone. If we were all able to aggregate the filth we produce in a manner that lends itself for collection and even where possible segregate the filth into organic that can be used for composting and inorganic divided into plastics, cans and bottles, we shall be on the way to recycling this heavy dose of filth in Ghana and making money out of filth.

It is only then that we can accuse those in governance of failure. We are not doing our part and yet vigorously blame others for non performance. It surely takes two to tango. We must educate all Ghanaians that you do not create filth and expect anybody to come and clean up after you.

Ghana's environment is polluted by the foul odour from the decaying filth and vehicular pollution. Hitherto when Ghana's petrol was lead based, there was heavy metal pollution and work done by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proved there was lead in the hairs and nails of people living around areas of heavy traffic densities such as First Light, Kaneshie. Many children born and growing up around such areas may have increased prevalence of asthma.

The lead has since been replaced by manganese and we somehow feel manganese is neutral. As a country, we neglect research to our problems and never seem to want to find solutions.

The numerous Ghanaians whose source of livelihood is to sell in traffic from break of dawn to sunset inhale nothing but benzene and propylene filled air generating free and super radicals that slowly eat away at their lungs. The entire Medical Profession looks on with professional complicity as if we have no voice. If where Ghanaians live, what they eat, drink and breathe do not matter to us health professionals, then we are not true professionals. We must get our acts together and work for the good of all and not only our conditions of service.

Water pollution

Almost Ghana's rich labyrinth of river bodies have been polluted by self styled galamsey operators, some of whom are foreigners. Who or which Ghanaian can go to any foreign land and pollute their water bodies with such impunity? It can never happen and it will never happen but on a daily basis, the lack of law enforcement and the readiness of those in authority to compromise for the sake of selfish gain has rendered this country lawless. I visited the source of the Birim, Ayensu and Densu rivers on the Atiwa ridge, a world biodiversity area which is plundered with impunity daily for logs and bushmeat against any existing law while the law enforcement agencies look on. For what shall it benefit Ghanaians if we gain all the riches but loose the very essence of life which is clean water and a clean environment.



Conclusion

Ghana with all its laws has contrived not to enforce any of it and in the chaos, some are beneficiaries. The increased death and diseases among Ghanaians and the stresses and strains of living in Ghana are as a result of the lawlessness and lack of readiness to enforce all the laws on our statute books.

How do we in our readiness to dream of Ghana at 100 years not take the first bold step of creating a disciplined and law abiding society.

It is my belief that Ghanaians all over the world outside Ghana are law abiding and did not go through any course(s) of instructions to obey the laws of their new countries. It comes as second nature and that is why I believe it is ignorance and lack of law enforcement or damn right lawlessness more than attitude that has put Ghana in its present predicament.

A stitch in times saves nine. Ghana in 2017 must of necessity be a law abiding with a well planned and executed administrative capital and a decongested Accra as the business capital. My bet is on the East Gonja enclave as the new capital enclave.

The writer is rector of The Institute of Entrepreneurship Kokomlemle, Accra.