We conclude the article started in the Friday, February 12, 2015 issue.
It was written by Sam Clegg
The population density was concentrated in places where the first settlers of Accra and its suburbs pitched their tents. For a very long time there was the belief that the Ga tribe, of which Accra forms the central core, was not the type that explored other places beyond the bridge of its nose.
And, therefore, the likelihood of Accra and its suburbs growing by leaps and bounds was a forlorn cry. Added to this was the fact that the Gas formed only a small fraction of the total population of the country. This was and is quite incorrect. There was something peculiar about the Gas as settlers in their present locations, and very different from, say, the Akans.
While the latter came out of villages and hamlets to found and create towns which have turned into modern-day urbanities, the former went out to establish villages and hamlets from their first original settlement areas. Thus there are numerous villages in the Greater Accra area which were created from the centre. The subject will be revisited in a subsequent paragraph.
Changes
Accra took over the capital status from Cape Coast in 1898. Colonial governance turned Accra into a terminus. All roads led to Accra. After independence, this situation was exacerbated by the centralised nature of government planning. If one needed a passport, job, quick health attendance, decent worker’s accommodation etc., Accra was the place to make it happen fast. Political clouting did not help the situation either. All the people that mattered most lived in Accra; ministers, members of parliament etc., and one necessarily had to get into the sphere of influence of such people in order to be heard, helped and also feared. Thus rural migration to Accra started in earnest and has intensified ever since, even if for other reasons than the aforementioned.
The construction of a new harbour and township at Tema was another factor. Majority of both skilled and unskilled workers fuelled the population of both Accra and Tema long before the two areas were declared a twin city. As a good or bad strategy, many small and light industries were sited in Accra and Tema. Today the two areas, however, operate under separate assemblies. Maybe it is just as well since Tema, phenotypically, cannot claim any portion of a centenary celebration of Accra.
So let Accra have its celebration, its way. But what is there to show for it? The old hand of time and grime has turned Accra proper into a rundown area. So much so that the often trumpeted accolade of Accra being the gateway to the country, is as laughable as it is a misnomer, more so, when it is falsely talked of as the gateway to the West Africa sub-region. The centre of Accra is always choked, clogged and intertwined with both vehicular and human traffic. There are too many vehicles for too few roads. There is some work on roads (old and new) but the mayhem this also creates attracts the other siamese twin of bedlam.
The mayhem is caused by the numerous hawkers and street vendors who refuse to be moved to new market areas. They vanish for a while and wait in the wings when the heat is on, only to resurface in no time. The bedlam is caused by the free-for-all conversion of frontages of houses into shops and stores selling from car engines, spare parts to bric-a-brac. During business hours, some streets are just impassable. Indeed, there are busy streets where some stores sell building materials; plywood, roofing sheets, cement, and the list can be endless. When the big trucks arrive to discharge such goods from their supply sources, other users of the streets do so at the behest of these big truck drivers who park at random. Crazy!
Sanitation is virtually non-existent. There are too few places of convenience for the growing population. It is said that every new born child brings along its own waste. One can thus imagine the waste that adult migrants and their retinue bring to Accra where for a long time it has been difficult to cope with waste disposal. Mounds of rubbish soon turn into mountains for months on end. Liquid waste disposal had better be left unmentioned. Long queues are formed infront of few available places of convenience in order to unload moving bowels. As a result, those who cannot wait find other ways to unload. No wonder faecal discharges are found in the most untoward places – in gutters behind buildings, bushes and open spaces.
One cannot help but feel that there is a providential hand which is perpetually interceding on behalf of Accra, such that no major plague has been recorded as yet.
Is Accra expanding? The answer is, “by great leaps and bounds”. The disconcerting phenomenon is that most people are just siting and constructing buildings with virtually no regard to basic infrastructural needs and development. Plans to this effect are largely non-existent. All the Ga villages referred to in a foregoing paragraph are gradually joining up with Accra proper. Indeed, some are already considered part of Accra. The traditional authorities and families who possess lands are having a field day just disposing of them to the nouveaux riches with no consideration for integrated planning. Some people complain that, in fact, there are no plans to follow. The fear, however, is that if such haphazard developments are allowed to continue, Accra, with its myriad of problems, may end up becoming a hotbed of a planet surrounded equally by a hotbed amalgam of satellites with one outlook – white washed sepulchres; finely painted outsides but full of rottenness.
Accra has a problem; a very big problem. How the authorities will manage to bring it to a standard befitting “a gateway” remains to be seen. For the moment, it has been talk, talk and more talk on intended face-lifts with little action beyond the few roads under construction. This problem was succinctly and nicely put by the Nae Wulomo, Chief Fetish Priest of Accra, during the recent Homowo Festival when officials of government, including the mayor of Accra, went to present customary drinks to the chiefs and people of Ga Mashie.
The Nae Wulomo, in his ritualistic prayer offering in the Ga language, said inter alia, “.......... when people in authority get something to eat (share) they do not remember us.” Truly, Accra has been starved for far too long.
• This article was first published in the West Africa Magazine 18 years ago. The writer, who passed away in 2010, was a former editor of the Daily Graphic.
