By Solomon Mensah
 |
| Accra-Kumasi Highway |
Few days
ago, trending on our print and electronic media- newspapers, television, radio, online among others- was the news of the armed robbery incident on the Accra-Kumasi highway.
The crime, which eye
witnesses reported was suspected to have been carried out by about five Fulani men, saw
one driver who plied the road being killed and other commuters being robbed, too.
Speaking
on Sunyani-based Sun-City Radio, a driver who witnessed the horror ‘movie’ but
escaped death narrated his ordeal. According to him, on the said day, he was
journeying from Accra to Kumasi. At a point on the road, he was signalled to
stop by a man. The driver says he had already noticed a quasi-accident-involved
car parked somewhere ahead of him. So… he thought the helpless man's frantic call was
aimed at saving the accident-involved car’s victims.
After ignoring the
supposedly help-needing man, he, however, realized that he was the
conductor of an accident-involved car whose master (driver) had been shot to death by
these unknown armed robbers. Apparently, he was trying to tell him to stop. These ‘monsters’ ahead had taken the life of an innocent driver and wouldn't mind
taking his, too.
The
eye-witness-driver told Sun-City Radio’s morning show host, Nana Kas, that when
the armed robbers shouted, "Stop!" at him with their guns being brandished in the air,
he said his last prayer. “I knew I was standing between the junction of life
and death,” he said.
Fortunately
for him, they took all the money on him and that of his conductor and were
ordered to lie prostrate like an agama lizard that had fallen from an iroko tree. “My
phone fell from my pocket and laid few meters from where we had prostrated on
some weeds. I wanted to crawl, take it and call the police but my conductor warned me
to stop lest they shot us to death.” If the robbers had taken one of the eggs from the
crates of eggs he had loaded into the Kumasi-bound car and placed on his heart, it would have cracked. Trust me.
“Lying on
the weedy floor for some minutes, we saw a VIP bus coming. They gave a warning
shot signalling the bus driver to stop. After the bus stopped, they demanded
that he opened the bus’ door of which he refused. They started firing at the door and broke its glass windows through which they passed into the bus,” he confirmed. The nightmare-narrating
driver said that the bus then stood as still as a cemetery and what really happened in it was unutterable.
That was
just an eye witness’ naked-eye-coverage of the monsters’ horror. This is not
the first of such armed robbery cases on our highways, especially that of Accra-Kumasi road. Neither is it going to
be the last.
When such happens, the newspapers give it a front page honour and the
radio and television stations re-echo it on their proverbial ‘newspaper review’ shows. Security experts are
called on to suggest ways of curbing the highway menace and the very armed robbers,
I suppose, laugh. Why? One needs not to be a prophet to tell the robbers that
‘all the seeming concern would die off after a week.’
So...
while ‘Ghana’ heavily snores over such an important, life-threatening issue as
this, the robbers adopting the guerrilla’s tactics would
continually have a field day- coming like a flash in the pan, attacking, looting, killing and dashing back into the thickets. After all, who cares!?
Whenever I
sit in a bus plying the said highway, I incessantly say, "Thank you God
for how far you have brought us," in every one hour. Indeed, in this crazy
world where some brutes would take guns to rob and kill when they feel like
doing so, one cannot help but be thankful to God for a safe trip.
Is it not
sad that our various political parties see education
as the only bit of their manifesto worth achieving? Nana Nyame’s sun is shining
in vain. In this technological era, can’t we have solar street lights on the
Accra-Kumasi highway and the other highways for the sake of those whose votes
would make the politician what he or she prays to be? Can’t we have security
patrols on the roads? I reiterate, "No one cares!"
The buses
at first adopted the police-on-board policy but if I may ask, “3k) sii s3n?”
Nine day (or even less) wonder!
The
National Road Safety Commission, the Government of Ghana, the buses, and authorities concerned, together with our media
are heartily snoring. Indeed, our elders were prophetic in opining that, "when the hen is drunk, she forgets
about the hawk." Are we not over-drunk with politics?
On the day
a new government is sworn into office, the politicians would launch ‘the
operation next election’ campaign and sadly, majority of our media houses would
trumpet such agenda throughout the four-year tenure.
We may
continue to snore but we must not forget that we cannot kill a louse with one
finger. It was that driver then, who
knows who is next? May be you, maybe me. I am not a prophet of doom.
The writer is a Sunyani-based Freelance
Journalist/Cultural Activist.
Twitter: @Aniwaba
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