For more than a year, the Daily Graphic has consistently drawn attention to a dangerous and growing menace on the roads of Accra: the systematic takeover of pedestrian walkways, bus stops and road shoulders by petty traders and hawkers.
The National Road Safety Authority has begun stakeholder engagement to address the problem.
That is welcome, but we must be blunt: this problem does not need more engagement to understand.
It needs enforcement.
Everyone who uses Accra’s roads knows what is happening.
Malfunctioning traffic lights, broken road signs, faded road markings and reckless driver behaviour are already killing people on our roads.
Data from the NRSA shows that pedestrians account for nearly 40 per cent of road traffic deaths in Ghana.
When you then add traders who display their wares on pavements designated for pedestrians, and drivers who park on the carriageway because bus stops have become markets, you create a perfect storm for carnage.
Our observations across the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area paint a grim picture.
The Central Business District of Accra is almost impassable for pedestrians.
Mallam Market, Kaneshie enclave on the Dr Busia Highway, the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange area, Kwabenya to Achimota Mall, Odorkor Tipper to the main traffic light, Madina, Nima-Mamobi, Agbogbloshie — these are no longer just trading centres; they are zones where road infrastructure has been completely annexed for private commercial use.
City guards and police personnel are simply overwhelmed.
The Graphic Road itself — the very stretch from the Farisco Traffic Light on Kwame Nkrumah Avenue to the Obetsebi Lamptey Interchange, right in front of our head office — has become a case study in impunity.
Pedestrians — schoolchildren, nursing mothers, the elderly — are forced off walkways onto the main carriageway, directly into the path of speeding vehicles.
Why has this been allowed to fester?
First, there is a failure of metropolitan governance.
The Accra Metropolitan Assembly and its sister assemblies — LaDMA, Ga Central, Ga East, Ga West, Adentan, Ledzokuku — have by-laws that prohibit trading on pavements and road shoulders.
But enforcement is episodic, selective and often compromised.
Task forces swoop in, seize a few wares, and leave.
Within hours, traders are back. In many cases, allegations abound that some city guards and market toll collectors actually collect money from these illegal traders, legitimising the illegality.
Second, at Kaneshie, Mallam, Madina and Agbogbloshie all in Accra, the legitimate traders inside the markets complain that their colleagues outside, who pay nothing, get more customers because they are closer to the roadside and to passengers.
This unfair competition drives more traders out of the markets onto the pavement.
The NRSA is right to be concerned. Its mandate is to reduce road traffic crashes and fatalities.
But it cannot do it alone.
This is not a road safety issue alone; it is a city management, law enforcement, and livelihood issue.
The AMA, Ghana Police Service MTTD, NRSA and Department of Urban Roads must jointly reclaim all pedestrian walkways and bus stops in the identified hotspots within 30 days.
Not a one-day decongestion exercise, but a 24-hour enforcement regime with permanent barriers, bollards and no-trading markings.
Accra cannot claim to be a modern capital city when its citizens cannot walk safely on pavements built with taxpayer money.
The right of a pedestrian to walk safely supersedes the right of a trader to sell by the roadside.
We have talked enough.
The NRSA stakeholder engagements must produce a timetable, a map of hotspots, and a visible enforcement presence.
If we wait until a tanker runs over schoolchildren forced onto the road at Kaneshie or Graphic Road, we would have failed as a city and as a nation.
