Opinions of Friday, 2 June 2023

Columnist: Rockson Adofo

Has Ghana ambulance indeed found its way to a car dealership in Dubai?

GoG branded ambulance on display at a Dubai delearship GoG branded ambulance on display at a Dubai delearship

On Monday, 29 May 2023, a video taken in Dubai of an alleged ambulance belonging to Ghana but found in a car dealership in Dubai was forwarded to my WhatsApp page. I could not believe my eyes and wondered how.

However, as a deep thinker who does not swallow anything thrown at him hook, line and sinker, I decided to do a further search on the internet to see how Ghana ambulances look like, including the inscriptions on them.

I could confirm the veracity of the emergency number as written on the side of the van along with the other inscriptions against those in Ghana.

My curiosity took me a bit further to discover the entire emergency numbers for the three emergency services in the country.

If I am not mistaken, the emergency numbers in Ghana are: Police – 112/ 191/ 18555. Fire – 112/ 192. Ambulance – 112/193.

My job has been made easier by the fact Ghana Ambulance Services on Tuesday, 30 May 2023, issued an official statement before I could publish my views about the video put out on social media and went viral to put the credibility of the government in disrepute.

Anyone that had come by the video may have first had a bad impression about the government; thinking they are involved in corrupt activities regarding the mysterious Ghana ambulance found in Dubai.

Nonetheless, the ambulance should rightly be there, inferring from the statement issued by Ghana Ambulance Service as could be seen from its true copy reproduced below.



From the video, our fellow Ghanaian claiming to have gone to Dubai on a business trip to purchase cars, hence visiting that car dealership, did a great disservice to himself and to mother Ghana. Why do I say this, one may ask?

cid:image001.jpg@01D9934B.C30BC8E0

He did well to find out the price of the van, thus, the ambulance.

Could he not have gone further, and cleverly of course, to find out from the dealer how the van with Ghana coat of arms on it ended at his yard? If he had done that, the impression he had while doing the video and putting it on social media would have been different. The dealer may have explained to him why the ambulance bearing such complete identification of Ghana was in Dubai.

The fact the ambulance is new but not old to be sold for second hand with all the inscriptions to raise an eyebrow on it should have pricked the mind of the author of the video to conduct further investigations to be certain about why it was in Dubai.

Nevertheless, he jumped into a hasty conclusion, believing the government is into corruption.

In Ghana, people just swallow anything thrown at them whole without asking questions because of the nature of the bad politics that we practice in the country.

People are too partisan and politically polarised to be rational. They just jump to conclusions as fit their political agenda. Therefore, we have to be careful about the information we put out in the public domain, except it is purposed to deceive people, the discipline in which the NDC has majored and obtained a Ph.D.

It is difficult to undo damage as says an Akan proverb that goes, “Baabi a nntoa aduro no, nsaneɛ nnuru hɔ".

For this reason, we should think before we act in order not to cause unnecessary problems for others.

Fellow Ghanaians, please don’t see our brother in the video as a hero but one who failed to live up to expectations. He has created false impression in the minds of Ghanaians for nothing.

Some political parties and their members might have embraced the video with glee, disseminating the content and interpreting it as suits their agenda.

Anyway, the truth is out to disprove the view of the author of the video and those who might have taken the content same as it came.