Drying the tears of Adjei Kojo
Normally, an exercise to clear squatters from public lands should be hailed by all. So when bulldozers sank their teeth in concrete and metal at Adjei Kojo, a sprawling community near Ashaiman, about two weeks ago on the orders of the Tema Development Corporation (TDC), it could have been seen as a good riddance of unauthorised structures.
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Unfortunately, Adjei Kojo has come to represent irresponsibility and in a way, callousness on the part of our leaders. Whether those whose buildings were pulled down at Adjei Kojo legitimately owned the land or not is not my concern. The issue is, why should officials of TDC wait till a community like Adjei Kojo spring up before taking action?
There are many Adjei Kojos in Ghana now, especially in the capital city, as if the law does not exist. Take Sodom and Gomorrah in the heart of the city. Efforts to redevelop the place has floundered because the city authorities had watched passively while the place developed into a big town with a population running into hundreds of thousands. Today, it is difficult to relocate all those people and therefore Sodom and Gomorrah will remain where it is and the redevelopment exercise will remain a dream in the imagination of the city authorities.
The question is, why should we allow people to flout the law and gain acceptability before action is taken? The Tetteh-Quarshie Interchange, for example, is growing into a sprawling market and nobody seems to care. Tomorrow, any attempt to clear the place will be met with resistance not only from the squatters but also the general public, especially human rights activists, with some justification.
Accra has become a huge jungle because markets, lorry parks, and dwellings have been built anyhow anywhere without recourse to the law. The result is obvious. The city gets flooded at the slightest drizzle. The traffic jams experienced by motorists have a lot to do with bad planning and the construction of structures at unauthorised places.
The calamity of Adjei Kojo could have been avoided if the authorities of TDC had acted to prevent people from building on its lands in the first place. To wait until people have made homes for their families before stepping in to apply the law is wicked, to say the least.
The same can be said of other settlements that have gained legitimacy with time because the city authorities have turned a blind eye to illegal structures that were springing up.
By the way, what business has the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) got to offer the victims of the TDC operation tents? Is that the solution to their problem? If we know that homelessness is a serious disease, then the demolition exercise should not have been carried out in the first place. Replacing a house with a tent is the last thing the authorities should have thought of.
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