Madness and lawlessness on the highways
I always get home with headache, after traversing the highways in the capital city of Accra and its environs and other busy roads in the country.
Advertisement
It is a bizarre episode, especially in Accra. Automobiles go berserk, although they are ridden by Homo sapiens. We know that if the horse is mad, it does not mean the rider is. If it happens that way, the madness is awry and goes beyond proportion. The picture?
Driving in the 90s
I began driving in the late 1990s and my work took me several times from Cape Coast to Accra and beyond. Those days the vehicles on our roads were not as many as they are today. Even then, during the rush hours, everybody tried to meander their ways out.
It was common to see some drivers who would stop at nothing to squeeze the noses of their vehicles into the least space in front of others and if the space was in front of me, I heard them ask, “Pastor, would you not give us the way to go before you?” Often, I would chuckle and, amid fresh outburst of mirth, reply rather humourously, “Oh, I will sleep here.” Some often turned the back of their hands and threw it at me abusively. That was the beginning of worse things to come.
Driving today
Today, if anyone drives in Accra, the situation is more than unbearable. Decorum in driving today has gone to the dogs. Respect for the other person’s right of way does not exist.
Driving on the Spintex Road is hell for its anarchic traffic situation. A one-lane passage has forcibly been turned into two and, at times, three.
Drivers do not care overtaking both on the left and right sides. It is terrible on the Kasoa road. On two occasions, my car was hit by a taxi-cab and a 207 Benz bus and I had to repair the portions hit.
The whole thing boils down to the fact that there is total breakdown of law and order on our highways. Some of us who try to be sagacious are deemed foolish and others yell insults at us.
Other Trending Stories
Sometimes ago, I straddled on the road with the intention to admonish other drivers to keep in the queue. The amount of insults and shouts I received! I discontinued not because of the insults but I saw that it was not yielding the desired results. At times, I see other drivers doing same. But the impact is evanescent because when the straddler branches off, the disorder resumes.
The last straw that broke the back of the camel was when I realised that this struggle for space is not perpetuated by taxi and “trotro” drivers alone. Men and women plushly dressed and driving their posh cars, old folks, people whose vehicles bear the insignia of their churches and those privileged to own sirens on their vehicles as if that was the order of the day, blaring out the cacophonous, tympanum-deafening sounds to usher the unrestrained passage of some personalities.
The little said about the motor riders, the better. They ride carelessly and run through the traffic lights showing red, at times under the full glare of the police.
Wasting travel time
The result is that we waste more time travelling than if we were all law-abiding and respecting the rights of other road users. It also accounts for the many road accidents that claim precious lives. This reminds me of the lyric “Driver banza”.
This “madness” and lawlessness has eaten deep into the very roots of the Ghanaian populace. Go to our streets and vicinities: Choked gutters, filth and litter all over! Apart from indiscipline on our roads, there is also a wanton dissipation of our nation’s natural resources, which is greatly affecting our ecosystem and financial resources. I wonder the kind of people we are.
Proposals
I have a few proposals to make:
1.There should be serious education of Ghanaians on general attitudinal change, from bottom to top. This could be taken up by the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) to sensitise the masses to the woes and dangers of indiscipline that has engulfed our beautiful nation.
2. Police presence on our highways should be upped. Whenever people learn the police are around, they behave on the roads, and drivers manage to be obedient. The police could detain the “much-in-haste” drivers on the spot where they misbehaved for an hour or two. This can continue until the habit is intrinsically formed into a behaviour among people.
3.The disciplined should not lose heart; let us not restrict the evil one, frustrating and annoying though the misdemeanour of the others would seem. One day, they will all come to toe our line.
David Livingstone is said to have prayed, about the slave trade thus: “May heaven’s rich blessing be upon those who will help heal this ‘open sore’ of Africa”. So do I pray that heaven’s bounteous benedictions be upon all who will help heal this ‘open sore’ of Ghana – indiscipline, madness and lawlessness in our dear, lovely country.
Writer’s email: knad74@yahoo.co.uk