The problems of Accra ; In the face of an oncoming centenary celebration

Accra was comparatively small, less populated, compact, quite well serviced by the available colonial-type utilities, neat, serene, especially so on Sunday, and beckoning.

Vehicular movement was smooth, sometimes few and far between, including horse-drawn carts which were then part of the system. This could well be the recollection of boys and girls born in the World War II years (early forties), growing up thereafter, and trudging barefoot to and from school with writing tablets tucked under their armpits.

Schools were sited within the town and towards its limits. Apart from what used to be “government schools”, missionary-run ones also were in abundance; Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Anglican, A.M.E Zion etc., with their codes of ethics for neatness, cleanliness and disciplinary rules which made attendance an unbroken chain for the enrolled. Miscreants, vagabonds and truants had not places in them, unlike most of the children of today who divide their time between going to school and child labour. This guarded attendance code equally applied to the teachers of the time. The various educational organs made sure of that. School buildings were very well maintained, unlike the present where most are largely in a decrepit state.

A well-drilled army of sanitary teams comprising, inspectors, headmen and labourers ensured strict daily clean-ups outside and within homes. Non-compliance attracted summons and subsequent stiff penalties by the courts. Designated markets and stores were the only places where foodstuffs, household necessities and other goods were respectively sold or purchased. Today, wares are thrust into the faces of passers-by on sidewalks and pavements and even passengers in vehicles right in the middle of busy streets.

Travelling within the city was easy. Government-run buses plied allotted routes to precision. The Omnibus Services Authority (O.S.A.) buses took off from a central terminal and worked designated routes, stopping to pick up or drop off passengers only where such mandatory stops had been provided. Taxis, even though not unionised, obeyed laid down town council bye-laws regarding parking, stopping and fares. Today threats of heavy fines are the deterrents used to ensure compliance by taxi drivers, yet the rules are broken more than they are observed.

The police traffic unit virtually experienced no major traffic setbacks save the checking of rare infractions of the law by one bad nut among many. For the avoidance of accidents within the town, it became the exception rather than the rule, for most non-Accra resident commercial drivers to stop their vehicles at the town limits and hire resident town-drivers to drive into town and then drive back to the same spots where they took over from the original drivers.

Smooth traffic flow

Accra was not choked by either vehicles or human traffic because unnecessary detours were discouraged and many one-way streets aided the smoothness of traffic flow. No choked gutters emitted foul smells in busy areas except when the liquid waste or rubbish trucks drove past. Generally, the air was clean and became even cleaner when sea breezes lapped the southern tip and blew inland, over the low buildings, enabling the wind to surge as far inward as could be imagined in the mind’s eye.

The beach, in many places, was coconut-palm-fringed, all the way from the eastern boundary to the west and the sands shone bright. The several lagoons too went through their seasonal flow into the sea and conversely ebbed without let or hindrance. Presently, pollutants and other waste materials have killed some of these lagoons and others are on the verge of becoming extinct.

The serenity of Accra was epitomised by the outlay of High Street and its environs. Across the street from the Holy Trinity Cathedral (Anglican), stood the smaller Presbyterian Church and its adjoining manse whose places have now been taken by the moribund Ghana National Trading Company (G.N.T.C). There were no traffic jams with their attendant impatient horn-tooting, foul language, irritating cat-calls and obscene gestures. Sundays were even better. The area became a “heavenly realm” filled with mostly church-goers coming and going before and after church services. To the south and south-west lay (and still lie) the seven quarters of Ga Mashie (Accra Central). Dwelling houses here were natively spartan but with a touch of clinical cleanliness. This area also embraces, to this day, the Ussher and James Forts which still conjure an eerie hindsight of slavery and the colonial past. (James Fort now serves as a prison).

One area of Accra which brings nostalgic memories is Amsterdam to the old north of the town, whose name the locals corrupted to read and sound Amusudai. It lay within the imaginary perimeter fence of what used to be a kind of Maginot line dividing the local houses and the residences of the British colonial serving government officials. A large portion of this area must have been an elevated copse and this was where some of the native rich started putting up their houses, leaving the downward slope free to allow the Odaw River free passage into the sea. Not anymore! The slopping area, even to the banks of that river is now choked with all manner of unauthorised structures, thus constituting a major flood prone area when the rains come.

It must be stressed again that Accra town, in those days, was small. The northern town limit did not extend beyond the present-day Kwame Nkrumah Circle. To the west, not beyond Korle Bu Teaching Hospital and to the east, not beyond the old Polo Grounds, where Kwame Nkrumah declared Ghana’s independence on March 6, 1957.

Suburban Accra, notably to the east, seemed to have jumped the Christiansborg area to embrace Labadi, Nungua, Tema Old Township and a few other places. To the west, Korle Gonno and Mamprobi. Going to these places, in those days, was quite a journey, especially so on foot. All told the population was only a few hundred thousand as against the nearly three million of today. 

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 also did not help the situation any. 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.