Housing: Rape in name of democracy

Then Candidate Akufo-Addo put it beautifully in 2016 as he campaigned to be President that “we are sitting on money yet we are suffering”.

This article does not set out to assess the performance of his seven-year stay in office. 

It is to agree with him that we are sitting on money, even today, and we are suffering, even today.

We have been mining and exporting gold since 1860s; indeed, we were so rich in gold we were named El mina (The Mine).

Under Ghanaian governments, since independence, the gold has not benefited the poor much. 

With all hope lost, our wish was, “only if we had oil!” We looked on as Nigeria “prospered” in the 1980s, building a completely new capital city from scratch – all with oil money.

Therefore, we concluded that oil was the be-all. 

In July 2007, Tullow Oil and Kosmos Energy struck oil in commercial quantities. O, how we exhaled! Finally and “at long last”, all our problems were over, we said. 

Today, Ghanaians think that hope lies in exporting marijuana.

And why not? The grass, which we had forever known as Indian hemp, ‘ntampi’ or the devil’s tobacco (‘abonsam tawa’) grows everywhere and all-year-round!  

Call me an incurable cynic, but I believe that we can export wee 10 ships a day and remain poor. 

The problem is not in our star.

When incompetence combines with greed, the result is incurable poverty. 

Raped

Dear Ghanaians, allow me to lament.

Allow me to say what everybody is saying in his or her bedroom.

We are being raped in the name of democracy and good English. 

See how incompetence and greed have combined to rob us of public housing.  

As of Tuesday, August 1, 2023, when Akufo-Addo cut the sod for the construction of 8,000 housing units at Pokuase, our housing deficit stood at two million. 

The question we should be asking is, with our record of uncompleted housing projects by successive governments, will this project not be another Saglemi? 

In 2006, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government of President Kufuor initiated the Ghana Affordable Housing Programme in six locations: Borteyman in Accra (744 one-bedroom apartments and 792 two-bedroom apartments), Kpone (2,500 affordable housing units), Asokore Mampong, Koforidua, Tamale and Wa. 

Two years later, in 2008, work stopped because we ran out of money. 

In 2012, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government of President John Mahama began the Saglemi Affordable Housing Project on a 300-acre land at Prampram to provide 5,000 housing units. 

Funds? No problem: Credit Suisse Bank of Switzerland was bankrolling the construction of the one to three-bedroom flats at a cost of US$200 million. 

Out of the 5,000 proposed housing units, 668 units were completed.

But again, disaster struck.

The project stalled in 2016 when government changed hands.

The original contract itself was amended three times, effectively reducing the project scope to 1,506 housing units, despite US$195,854,969.52 (98 per cent of the project funds) having been expended. 

A technical assessment report by the Ghana Institution of Surveyors in September 2020 valued the total cost of works on site at US$64,982,900.74.

Housing Minister Atta Akyea said US$159,040,000 had been embezzled. 

Meanwhile, the houses were said to be rotting away.

To continue the project would cost some US$68 million to complete, plus US$46 million to provide off-site infrastructure.

This is what Akufo-Addo meant when he announced at Tuesday’s (August 1, 2023) sodcutting at Pokuase that the Saglemi project was not economically viable for further government investment, and as a result, it would be sold to the private sector. 

Question: Why did we have to wait for seven years? Couldn’t the project have been completed while the courts tried the guilty officials?  

Criticise Kwame Nkrumah all you want, he had the foresight to set up the State Housing Corporation, which we closed down after his overthrow.

Many of the high-rise workers flats and estate houses all over the country were undertaken by SHC. 

Young as I was, I saw work on SHC houses at Adiembra, Sekondi.

Even today, we know of Nkrumah Flats at Laterbiokorshie in Accra. 

Coups d’etat 

I hate coups d’etat, but it should be said for General Kutu Acheampong’s SMC government that workers housing became a reality under him.

Talk of the SSNIT Flats at Dansoman (the largest in West Africa, I am told), Sakumono, Tema, Adenta, Ho, Kumasi, Cape Coast etc. 

In total, 7,168 housing units were developed nationwide and 98 per cent were sold to mostly salaried workers.

What do we see in the Fourth Republic? Akufo-Addo accused Mahama of inflating the cost of the Kasoa interchange.

Since then, Mahama, in opposition, has accused Akufo-Addo of “chopping inside” the Pokuase Interchange.

In the name of democracy, the Komenda Sugar Factory is still not functioning.

Blame game threatened the University of Ghana Medical Centre, but the people, fed up, cried out.  

We are sitting on money.

The writer is Executive Director,
Centre for Communication and Culture.
E-mail: ashonenimil@gmail.com