Controversy Unlimited: Irritating Irritants And Eye Sores

Calus Von Brazi

We have been made to believe that Ghana,is the gateway to West Africa, what with the relative peace and tranquility that has characterized socio-economic as well as political life within the sub-region. Yet it also holds true that Ghana is fast become one huge cauldron of decadence and degenerate behaviour, with filth becoming the national belt of unity traversing every strata of society. Ordinarily, this assertion would be dismissed even by yours truly as a notch too harsh on the good people of this country. However, recent developments on the social and environmental front give great cause for alarm while exposing our shameful penchant for mediocrity and lack of proper supervision. A few examples would suffice in this instance.

Take Teshie for example. It is virtually the national rubbish dumping haven, with an imminent pandemic and disaster waiting to happen, while the hapless and helpless people of the community look on apathetically in a pathetic tryst of expectation of doom and gloom. Situated right in the middle of the thoroughfare between Teshie Estates and the adjoining community of Nungua can be found the highest peak of refuse ever gleaned by yours truly throughout the country. For purposes of this article, let’s call this refuse peak “Bola Hill”. It is the dumping site for Zoomlion and a host of smaller refuse collection agencies littered all over the Metropolitan and sub-metropolitan areas of Accra. One would need extremes of skill, even when driving construction equipment to climb atop Bola Hill. Its mere size and looks is enough to frighten the uninitiated into trauma for if there is anything appropriately termed an eye sore, yours truly would readily and unreservedly classify Bola Hill as such. My good friend Fred Darko is not likely to be seen passing anywhere near Bola Hill with his daughter, although that is the shortest and most appropriate route to his dwelling place from the newly resurfaced road that separates Baatsona from Teshie . The reasons is not too difficult to decipher: such a sight, could cause nightmares for his beloved daughter, and fill her childhood with memories that some psychiatrist may have to eject or exorcise at a future date so as to give the young girl a proper life; who will want to go through all that Freudian psychoanalytical brouhaha simply because of mismanaged garbage?

It is easy to sympathize with the Ledzokuku-Kpeshie Metropolitan Assembly (LEKMA) considering the arduous task they face in ridding Bola Hill of its hilly attributes. Yet it is also the case that the assembly exists precisely because tax payers of Accra and by extension Ghana, of which the people of Teshie and surrounding areas are a subset pay them to prevent disease and filth from becoming the crucible within which their fortunes are determined. How then is it that the more available resources are channeled into the eradication and reduction of the heaps of garbage and piles of unmentionable matter that constitutes Bola Hill, the more the hill asserts its right to grow without checks and redress, as if to say “I dare you to do your best, my lot is to grow and render your efforts ineffective and futile”. Something is bound to give and surely it must not be the case that what gave in the final analysis was our ability to collectively proffer a lasting solution that would insulate residents from possible epidemic and/or imminent pandemic. Would the LEKMA rise to the occasion and leave an imprint that would not only become a lasting impression but more importantly become the blue print for ridding filth-ridden areas of their characteristics?

Not too long ago, it was refreshing to see His Excellency the Vice President John Mahama, at his official best touring the area around the Accra Mall in an effort to help find ways to defeat the unrelenting Spintex Road traffic. It was also refreshing to hear the affable Vice President admonishing the project contractors to expedite action and to ensure that there is value for money. All well and good for a country where lateness to work can be excused on the basis of traffic on the same Spintex road, never mind that man hours and productivity care not two hoots about traffic if a nation truly wants to develop. Hidden from the eyes of His Excellency the Vice President and his entourage (including those who wanted the whole world to see that they accompany the Veep around) was a springing, nay, mushrooming piece of worry right under the giant Coca-Cola billboard on the Accra-Tema Motorway. Under the guise of beautifying the wide expanse of land that has doubled as part of the circle separating the cross-roads that divide Legon from Airport, can be found a shack, ostensibly built by the workers of the Department of Parks and Gardens within whose remit it falls to keep the greenry green, trim and proper. This shack has in turn engendered ‘satellite’ shacks in the contiguous zones, where the gardeners keep their working gear, gardening accoutrements and other related materiel. The eyesore value of these non-approved shacks is inherent in the destruction of the aesthetic nature of the very landscape the workers who built them without official sanction toil to preserve.

On any given day, one is likely to find washed clothes hanging on makeshift drying lines that extend from the sides of these shacks. One can only imagine the sight of flapping apparel on otherwise pristine grass and well manicured lawns. How does one enjoy the beauty of the place when the very people employed with the tax payers money so verily denigrate the same lawns which our money pays them to keep beautiful? It is almost as if there is no one thinking about the value of the scenery on our faculties as individuals and our appreciations of things, especially the environment as a nation. On Friday the fifteenth of May, I actually saw three children (what were they doing during school hours in these days of free education, meals and the yet-to-be-provided free uniforms?) playing on the lawn in front of the satellite shack that greets you immediately you exit the Tema motorway towards Legon. Somebody is sleeping on the job, and the earlier the entire Tetteh Quarshie Circle (is it still referred to as such?) is rid of this increasing nuisance, the better would be the chances of Dr. Vanderpuje at chalking some success as far as the maintenance of sanity in our capital is concerned. We certainly can do without a Sodom and Gomorrah phase II springing up at what is clearly becoming Accra’s next ceremonial area mainly because somebody decided to sleep on the job and consider such deviant behaviour trite and normal in the better Ghana we have been promised under the Grand Order of the Attahood.

Oh! Lest I forget. Who is responsible for maintenance of His Jerryship, J.J. Rawlings’ ridge residence? That person must be sacked immediately. Have you seen the walls around his house lately? They are so dirty. The man has just returned from South Africa and England where he met dignitaries, many of who shall pay courtesy calls on him at his residence (where real power, not the ECG/GRIDCo power rationing type, dwells). Do we want them to leave the shores of Accra and our indefatigable former president’s residence with enhanced thoughts of non-maintenance and lack of beautification if they are lucky enough not to see the sprawling mass of unregulated filth in the Pantang-Abokobi crevice simply because we did not repaint his Jerryship’s residence walls? Come on, this is not politics; let’s just do the right thing. At least when the deviant ‘MPP’ circus masters go to beg for their transgressions under the Diminished Order of the Kufuorhood, the white walls would have a soothing effect on their pathetic and increasingly penitent psyches.

Now to my favourite comfort zone; National Security. You see, Gbevlo the Lartey and Nunoo the Mensah, people say they are fighting their own turf war. Some even claim that Gbevlo the mustached Lartey is being starved of the funds he needs to successfully conduct his work and that unlike Francis the Poku who could unaccountably account for unaccountable imprest, Gbevlo the Lartey through no fault of his, but mainly through some azigizey security gizmos in the Big House is working on a shoe-string budget. Please, Nyaho’s uncle, don’t do that to Gbevlo the Lartey. A certain Osei D.K. did it to Francis Poku and I can bet you, it sent the elephant back to the bush faster than Kufuorship could rhyme “My Government”. Just give Gbevlo all the “dwetee” he needs so that he can catch all the sakawa boys in town. Truth is, I have discovered a sakawa “who is who” in open defiance of anything called national security. Before even sharing that with Gbevlo, could we change course and allow common sense to guide us in our car-extracting spree? I mean seriously, what is this unending obsession with cars? Let us assume all former appointees and members of the previous government return their cars; both the legitimately acquired and the ones some people assumed they were entitled to, as if their foreheads had “I am entitled to the car” etched on them. Would that compel Salam Forex Bureau from reducing the daily rate of the camboo-shoed dollar? Would a return of the cars make Barclays slash their interest rates to 9%? Or maybe taking back the cars would make some people happy that “we have embarrassed them”. It almost looks as if we are losing focus in this Land of Our Death. Please let us move on, for as I have stated in the previous edition two weeks ago, these cars would be out of fashion in two years and would have registered very little significance in terms of addressing the concerns of the electorate that put real jaguda into propping up the Grand Order of the Attahood.

Sorry for the digression, but it was necessary to state that as a basis for calling Gbevlo the Lartey to redirect his energies and capabilities into chasing cars of a different sort, herein taken to be the so-called sakawa cars in town. Most unfortunately, cyber café’s Kawawa who prides himself in being above the law and his cohorts have developed a new Sunday pastime in Accra, right under the nose of Gbevlo the mustached Lartey and Nunoo the Mensah who services his stroke 8 Mercedes Benz at Nyame Asumdwee workshop just like yours truly not far from the atwitwi. Sakawa moguls have turned the frontage of the Ghana International Trade Fair Company into a screeching ground, where the new kids on the block of the sakawa nomenclature take turns to thrill the people of La and surrounding areas to hours of dangerous car screeching antics. I shuddered the first time I witnessed it, just because among the observers and cars parked in the vicinity was Gbevlo’s 64 boom boom predecessor Mishio the Dan’s Cherokee. Thankfully it was not engaged in the screeching spree but what in God’s name has made it possible for sakawa boys to annex the car park with such brazen impunity and do what they like without anybody raising a finger of reprimand? If there are any cars to be arrested, I humbly submit from my biased corner that those are the ones for we dare not wait for a coterie of onlookers to be mashed to slime like the output of Lebanon grinding mills in returnee WO’s quarters before rising to avert this looming danger. Perhaps, if Nunoo the Mensah, who uses that road frequently takes a closer look at this Sunday afternoon (it starts from 14:30) pastime instead of striving to outdo those mandated to speak for government on several issues, we could avert the disaster that is waiting to happen one of these days. While at it, this column welcomes the new IGP; it would be nice for him to also go on an unregistered/ fake registration motorbike seizure spree at the same venue, but there must be no shooting like what happened to akpaga in the mid-1990s.

Finally, would it not be nice to station a few security operatives in and around the area to ensure that is never repeated at any given time ever again? Once upon a time in 1994, there was what we called the Thursday evening beach party. Which student did not want to attend? The day Steve Kwofie did his father in and consequently invoked the full force of the national security apparatus on the La Beach, that was the end of Thursday evening beach parties. Much as we went away dejected for this “incursion” into our space, we nevertheless realized that we were better off with the end of those days for what transpired during those beach parties are not worth recalling. Let us not look unceasingly at the already exposed behinds of politicians while a cross-section of the entire future leaders of this country waltz itself into frightening clear and present danger. Jehovah Nissi adorn your efforts with success till we meet again!