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| The crash scene at Dompoase, Central Region. Photo: Culled from online |
As the National Lottery
Authority [NLA] announces its winning numbers, every single year, the National
Road Safety Commission [NRSC] and other stakeholders in the transport industry
as well announce numbers. The latter’s numbers are, however, not what could win
anyone anything.
The NRSC’s numbers are
actually numbers of deaths! Numbers that could cause a huge magnitude of pain
than what those who lose to the NLA suffer. From the very onset of every New
Year, they [NRSC] start counting 5, 10, 30, 100… and before you realize they
had hit a crazy figure that you can’t believe that such figures/numbers
represent human beings killed on our roads.
So, in 2019, only,
Ghana as a country lost 2,284 persons to road crashes. 2018 was nothing
different. We counted 2,020 deaths of humans on our roads. Actually, statistics from 1991 to 2018 indicates
that 46,284 people lost their lives to road crashes. And if we were to fill the
Accra Sports Stadium —
which has a 40, 000 seating capacity — with these dead bodies, as many have put this in
perspective, we would have the venue overflowing with a surplus of 6000 bodies.
This
is sickening. Isn’t it?
“The crash statistics
in 2016 represent an increase of 15.6% and 6.77% in fatalities and serious
injuries respectively but a reduction of 11.7% in crashes over the 2015
figures,” says www.nrsc.gov.gh.
But, even when they talk about reduction in the number of fatalities or
whatever, the figures are still unimaginable.
The sad narrative
appears it would not be different for the New Year, 2020, if we do not put
proper measures in place. Already, the country was shocked to the marrow by the
news of the road crash that killed some 35 persons and injured many others at
Dompoase in the Central Region.
Eyewitnesses say, the
crash which occurred on January 14 had a Takoradi-bound bus with registration
number GR 5704-18 colliding with a Cape Coast-bound vehicle — GN 3780-10 —
after the former allegedly tried overtaking the latter.
If you look at our
country called Ghana, one thing immediately comes to mind. That, had it been a
human being it would have for long been admitted at the psychiatric hospital. Ghana
is totally mad! No apologies.
If you should type “road
accidents in Ghana” into the search engine Google, the multitude of links that
will pop up would get you fuming. Many of these crashes are caused by our own
faults either directly or indirectly.
Most of our roads are
not dualised and they are riddled with potholes. No functioning streetlights, majority
of drivers only know their steering wheels and brakes and the police to ensure
sanity extorts monies from these dangerous drivers. The list of our woes in the
transport industry is endless.
But, in a country where
only the so-called brilliant could read overhyped professions [law and
medicine] leaving the school dropouts to find solace in [commercial] driving,
what do we expect? In a country where corruption is rife at the Driver Vehicle
Licensing Authority [DVLA], what do we expect? Were we not in this country when
ace journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas went undercover at the DVLA and succeeded
getting driving license for a mentally derailed man?
So, like the bird which
goes to muddy the water and comes back to ask who did that, we continue to fool
ourselves as Ghanaians. Hypocrisy is killing us. If hypocrisy were not killing
us would we have expected the police not to take bribe from drivers when it is
an open secret that recruitment into the Ghana Police Service is not only based
on ‘Whom you know’ but how much one could pay?
Do we really expect the
police wo/man on patrol duties to say no to being bribed when they themselves
had to, first, bribe their way through police recruitment? They must recoup
their ‘investments’ and the rippling effect is — partly — the carnages on our
roads!
If I mean to continue
ranting on the reasons Ghanaians are dying on our roads, I could go on without
realizing I am tired. But, we must with the swiftness of a duiker propose
solutions that will put a stop to these deaths. If you care to know, China in
the midst of the dangerous coronavirus has given its architects and engineers the
task to design and build a 1000 bed capacity hospital — to contain the disease
in the Wuhan Province — within six [6] days. Yes, you heard me.
China is what one could
call a country. There are plenty of people there thinking with their brains. A
hospital to be built in six days? Back home, the architectural design alone
would take us no less than a year as politicians will capitalize on that to
tell Ghanaians why they should vote for them. I trust you have not forgotten
about the parked ambulances?
Anyway!
We must make driving an
enviable profession. Driving must not be a reserve of school dropouts who would
go commercial and carry our ‘cherished’ doctors and lawyers among others to
their early graves. As it is done in Sweden and many other developed and
civilized nations, one must reasonably suffer to gain their driving license. Drivers
in such places equally value their licenses as they do their school
certificates.
More so, even before we
could get driving to be enviable profession, I propose we set up Lion Check Points on our roads. Here,
our soldiers [the lions] must be deployed at check points on the roads
especially on highways. I guess you are not telling me the police is doing that
already? These soldiers of ours are not going to war anytime soon. We do not
even have what it takes to go to war. In 2017 when the Ghana Army was to join their
counterparts from Nigeria and Senegal on a mission to pressure Yahya Jammeh to
step down, in Gambia, our men delayed for three solid days.
The ready Ghana Army poised
for a possible war with the Gambian Armed Forces [GAMAF] had to rely on
commercial airlines. Let us not worry ourselves getting these soldiers for
regional/external operations. They must be given work to do here in Ghana.
At these check points,
the soldiers arrest recalcitrant drivers and give them tasks that could get
their energies drained. They could be made to climb a nearby tree and made to
wipe-clean every single leaf on its branches or made to weed acres of bushes —
either when arrested day or night — failure of which they [drivers] are given say
200 strong lashes. This must be streamed live on Facebook.
Better still, we could set
up Court On Wheels. This will have
lawyers and judges in special vans who would drive to a Lion Check Point to arraign drivers on the spot. In a matter of one
to three hours, a ruling is made. If these drivers deserve a prison term, they
are driven — leaving behind their buses/vehicles with arrangement made to get
passengers a new driver [if on a bus] — to appropriate prisons.
Whereas we quickly work
on dualising our roads, fixing potholes and making white elephant of streetlights
work, we must make the effort to change the people’s current state of mind. A
developing country like Ghana needs radical measures to streamline things.
After 10 years of
Ghanaians experiencing these militaristic measures to safe roads, everybody —
whether driver or passenger — will behave accordingly. Which driver would go
beyond their speed limit or needlessly overtake another vehicle when they have
it in mind that soldiers are dotted on the roads or they [drivers] could be
instantly tried by a court on wheels?
Let us not come back
here a year by this time to hear that over 2000 people lost their lives on our
roads. The time for drastic action is now!
The
writer is a broadcast journalist with 3FM 92.7. Views expressed here solely
remain his and not that of his organisation.
Twitter: @Aniwaba
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