Why Woeful Wednesday cries for public enquiry
There have been many responses to last week’s column titled: “Who is in charge of Ghana rain”. The article challenged the growing assertion by government officials that “we are all responsible for the June 3 tragedy in Accra”.
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Another point was to contest the point made by the Council of State that we should “stop the blame game.”
Many of the people who provided feedback appeared to think that my article suggested that citizens had no share of responsibility for what happened on Woeful Wednesday. Of course, that was not the intention, and regular readers of the Diary would know that attitudinal change is one of the most regular themes of this column.
However, the point of last week’s article was that the state bears the responsibility for what happened because it alone has the resources to prevent people from making the dubious “contribution” to the causes of the flood and fire.
The article ended on a call for an enquiry into the “floodfire”. Since then, more voices have been added to this call, but I think it is important to continue to press for it. Indeed, it is long overdue.
In some countries, one of the first official responses would be to set up an enquiry in order to capture not just the evidence but also the emotions and ideas of the moment.
There are many excellent reasons why we must have a public enquiry but the most important one is to help the millions of people who were affected to recover. The events of Woeful Wednesday have traumatised people who were not even in Accra, so we can just imagine what the bereaved and especially survivors are going through.
There have been reports of recent incidents in which passengers have rounded on drivers for stopping at filling stations, and there are several media reports of neighbours confronting owners of houses they suspect to be blocking waterways. These are houses they have seen and ignored for years, but this is the heightened sensitivity caused by Woeful Wednesday. To put it simply, knowing what happened is not only the beginning of the healing process but enables us to respond to such situations with certainty and coolheadedness.
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Let us illustrate this point by looking at what happened to many people last Sunday, June 14, 2015, which was the wettest day in Accra since the sad events 11 days earlier. June is a wet month in Ghana but the mere hint of rain activates the panic mode in our brains.
As is normal during the rainy season, the downpour alternated between gentle and severe throughout the morning. In “normal” times, this would attract almost no attention. But last Sunday was different; we were living with memories from earlier in the month.
By early afternoon, social media was humming with warnings of floods and prophesies of the worst to come. By late afternoon information was circulating on social media about floods and especially warned people not to travel on the Lapaz- Kasoa road in Accra because it was severely flooded.
This was soon followed by a video that showed a huge truck sinking in what was captioned as “on the Kasoa road”. It was fake. I had seen that video more than a year ago and it had nothing to do with Ghana, let alone Kasoa.
The first fake photo was followed by several other photos which had been doctored from originals taken elsewhere. There were also pictures purporting to show broken bridges and exploding filling stations. There was mild panic as most people stayed put in their homes while monitoring the health and safety of their beloved ones near and far.
There was mild panic in the air. Not long ago, we had been praying for rain to cool the earth. Now, even the wispiest cloud has become a menacing threat. Accra rains and even floods have now taken a different dimension, which is not always positive. People have developed hostilities towards their neighbours who they accuse of having built in waterways or somehow compromised the flow of water.
Similarly, petrol stations have also become the enemy of choice as people propound all kinds of incendiary theories. And theories abound. Apart from the usual suspects such as waterways and drains blocked by buildings and rubbish, there has been speculation about what caused the fire in the media; and it appears that no theory is too far-fetched.
One reason for this is that the people who get the most opportunity to discuss such matters, especially on the morning shows on radio and television, are politicians and their media allies who are pressing for advantages in one way or the other.
As we all know, information is the light that dispels the gloom of ignorance and the best way to have all the information relating to the events of June 3 is to set up a credible public enquiry.
Of course, all manner of state agencies such as the police, fire service and the like are conducting their own investigations but those investigations are bound to focus on isolated areas instead of the whole.
Investigations to unpick the various strands of the sad events of June 3 will necessarily be complex, but could be better managed if the strands are all gathered into a single process.
The phrase “Never again” has been uttered in several contexts in the past three weeks. It is a powerful utterance. It is the title of a song, a play, a book and other forms of manifestation of the human spirit to overcome adversity.
More importantly, it is the title of a powerful book by Samantha Power, the US Ambassador to the UN. The subtitle of the book is “The World’s Most Unfulfilled Promise.”
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Although the book by the academic-turned-diplomat is about human rights, both the title and subtitle apply to our own cry of Never Again. It is also Ghana’s most unfulfilled promise, especially as it relates to our failed efforts to find a lasting solution to the perennial flooding of our capital city.
This problem – both the flooding and the unfulfilled promises – go back a long time. But this generation has to solve it without making any excuses.
A public enquiry headed by a senior judge or civil servant with no obvious political ambitions or affiliation will be the best panel to conduct such an enquiry.
Of course, the enquiry will not be limitedto only the recent floods if we want to get to the bottom of the matter. However, those who are currently responsible for specific aspects of the mess must be made to face the music.
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Shall we all pledge today
That never ever again
Should we suffer such pain
Just because it rained
While our fertile plains
Have no working drains
No one has been prosecuted for neglect of duty, so it is difficult to see how one cannot get away with bad verse.
P/S: It is welcome news that the government has set up a five-member committee to investigate the events of Woeful Wednesday. The members were selected from the Ministry of Defence, the Ghana Police Service and the Ghana National Fire Service – Daily Graphic, June 17, 2015.