The tranquil dawn of the people of Amoako, near Boamang in the Ashanti Region, was shattered by screams, moans and groans followed by the noise of a huge plunge into River Offin by two vehicles. One, a family of the infamous Mercedes Benz 207 bus, and the other, a KIA Pride taxi.
The inhabitants of the small town whose last few hours of early morning sleep was disrupted came out in their numbers to behold a spectacle of an event that, they, for years, suspected could not be avoided if things did not change. The bridge, constructed more than 70 years ago under the colonial administration, had given way, taking along on its last day, the lives of 17 precious lives including that of a year-old child and a pregnant woman, most of whom were on their way to mourn the lost of another relation.
The people of Amoako, who are straddled between Afrancho and Boamang, amidst the wailing for the carnage that had caused such a human loss, could not hide their anguish. This time, they felt it was not just a matter of lost of lives through a motor accident, which is a regular feature on our roads, but a clear result of human error, wrong judgement and careless irresponsibility.
The local people, who, though could not pride themselves in any engineering degrees from any college of science and technology, had complained on several occasions that the bridge had seen better days and needed to be put out of commission. Apart from being narrow, the bridge was constructed around 1938, when vehicles, if they existed at all, could be a rare phenomenon on our roads and, therefore, could hardly pose any danger to it.
Things have changed over the years and according to the inhabitants, their pleas to successive governments have fallen on deaf ears. They were unanimous. The politicians have failed them. That was why they were very bitter and they did not hide their anguish. Some even mentioned their present Member of Parliament at the peak of their distress, apparently because in the heat of the electioneering he might have promised them a new and stronger bridge.
The Amoako disaster was very unfortunate and another sad reminder of our lack of maintenance culture and that philosophy of waiting for disaster to struck before we begin to react in a desperate manner.
The bridge over River Offin at Amoako was a small one and yet the magnitude of the human loss when it collapsed was big. Can we, therefore, pause for a moment to picture how things would be like, if the Adomi Bridge that spans the River Volta should give way and go down with its load of vehicles and human beings?
The Adomi Bridge is not just a bridge over water. It is a very important bridge that strategically links the Volta Region to the rest of the country and in effect a big portion of the eastern part of the country to the rest.
Any mishap at Adomi could severely affect our links with our eastern neighbours; namely Togo, Benin and Nigeria. That means that the sub-regional integration we have been struggling hard to achieve will further be endangered.
So why should we allow Adomi Bridge, which was opened in 1956 by Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, then Head of Government Business, to support his greater dream of unitary Ghana to collapse because of some few simple decisions?
According to some experts, one of the supporting steel beams has collapsed, while two others have developed serious cracks, resulting in a depression on a section of the bridge. This is surely a recipe for disaster of monstrous proportions.
Interestingly, according to residents, the problem was first detected by fishermen who made several reports to the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA). The suspicions of the fishermen were confirmed two weeks ago, when engineers of the GHA came to do an inspection. Before you ask, allow me to ask; is there no inspection unit at the GHA? So what would have been our fate as a nation, if those fishermen were not curious enough to report their fears to the authorities?
There may be other bridges in the country sharing the same fate as the Adomi Bridge. We may not be lucky to have people fishing around them to feed us with their observations. In that case are we going to suffer the experience of Amoako on River Offin?
As we still ponder over that question, there is an overhead bridge on the Accra-Tema Motorway that was originally used to cart cattle to the slaughter house. That bridge has now been battered by several vehicles that carry loads above the stipulated height rendering it a serious liability to motorists. The driver of the last vehicle to go under that will make the sign of the cross, but not the next one. I hope we are not waiting for that.
A stitch in time, they say, saves nine. We still have several historical artefacts around wearing the garb of bridges but which nobody could tell the last time they had any maintenance.
Those who perished at Amoako on River Offin were not lucky. The thousands of motorists who use the Adomi Bridge on regular basis have some alert fishermen to thank, for saving them from an imminent danger. But how long shall we continue to be saved by fishermen, when there is a whole state institution to do a job that they have been paid to do?
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