Monuments of waste

By Kofi Akordor
THE military regime of General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong took a wise decision to build modern office complexes to house the Ghana Police Service in all the regions. Those complexes were designed to provide office accommodation for a full-strength regional secretariat and workshops for the service and remove the personnel from the dilapidated and very often scanty buildings which had been their lot.
Those complexes had got to advanced stages of completion when the Acheampong/General F.W.K. Akuffo regime was removed by another group of coup makers on June 4, 1979, led by Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings. The abrupt end to that regime brought those laudable projects to a halt.
More than 30 years after the execution of General Acheampong and six others, namely, General Akuffo, General R.E.A. Kotei, Rear Admiral Joy Amedume, Air-Vice Marshal Yaw Boakye, General E.K. Utuka and Col Roger Felli, no government had found it necessary to complete the office complexes for the police.
Those abandoned complexes became the abode of miscreants until somebody decided that they should be turned into makeshift offices for the Ghana Police Service. The service still lacks the requisite office accommodation at the district and regional levels which exudes the authority and confidence it must portray to the public as the nation’s main law enforcing agency and its first line of defence, while the abandoned complexes remain ugly scars of national neglect.
The wanton neglect and abandonment of national projects did not begin yesterday. It was well pronounced after the overthrow of the government of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the country’s first President. For ideological differences and to undermine all the good things the late Osagyefo stood for, all development projects initiated by that great man but which were not completed in his time were abandoned.
Prominent among such projects were the silos that were being constructed at various locations in the country for the storage of agricultural produce for very good reasons. While these silos remained uncompleted, we have just been reminded that sub-Saharan Africa loses an equivalent of US$4 billion as a result of post-harvest losses. Gone with the silos were the various processing plants established to give process and add value to agricultural produce in the country.
Today, Ghana, with a small population of 25 million or so, cannot support its food consumption, not only because we do not produce enough but significantly because even the little we produce go waste because of storage facilities. Unfortunately, our governments prefer to go begging for food aid from countries such as Japan which do not have a fraction of our fertile land, instead of addressing production and post-harvest losses in a more proactive and pragmatic manner.
Many years ago, Nkrumah’s administration decided on an integrated meat and leather industry by setting up the Aveyime Cattle Ranch and a tannery that would make industrial use of the hide of the cattle. His overthrow led to the abandonment of the equipment ordered from the then Czechoslovakia to rot in their containers. That display of hatred for one person also caused the collapse of our leather industry.
Today, after more than 40 years of that bad decision, we have gone back to the Czech Republic, one of the countries that emerged from the disintegration of Czechoslovakia, for assistance to build our leather industry.
Apart from the flagrant display of lack of any national development agenda which was characteristic of the immediate post-Nkrumah era, successive governments have not helped this country by following up and completing projects initiated by their predecessors.
The abandoned projects are many and varied and cumulatively undermine any pretence for a cohesive national development agenda. They include roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and housing projects which could be found in every part of the country. Some of them have been so totally forgotten that their original drawings could not even be found.
Most of these projects have been abandoned after heavy investments had been made in them. Take, for instance, cultural centres that were to be built in all the regional capitals. None of these have been completed, more than 30 years after they had been initiated. That means the annual national cultural festivals have to be celebrated in abandoned cultural centres, and at each celebration promises are made to complete the centres which were meant to be the central points of the nation’s cultural development and promotion to the outside world in the form of tourism.
The change over to multi-party democracy has not helped us much in this regard. While every new government initiates new projects to boost its political credentials, none makes the effort to complete what others have started. Incidentally, all the governments seldom see their projects through full completion before exiting office.
That is how, in the midst of our infrastructural shortfalls, we can boast bits and pieces of uncompleted projects all over the place. The latest in this haphazard approach to development is evidenced in the manner this government is handling the uncompleted housing projects started by the Kufuor administration.
This was a well-conceived and good-intentioned housing project but at the execution stage it ran into problems partly because of corruption, cronyism and the never-ending refrain of lack of funds. These estates which should have been accommodating workers in Accra, Ashanti-Mampong, Koforidua and other places have become dens of criminals and squatters who have a better use for a facility left to rot away slowly. Meanwhile, massive investments from our scarce resources have been sunk in the projects.
The Mills administration has its own housing agenda and is, therefore, not showing keen interest in the uncompleted ones started by the previous government. It has also initiated its own STX Housing Project which promises, among others, to accommodate the security agencies.
This project has its own challenges and by the time the first foundation stones are laid, there is no way the project will travel the full completion before President Mills completes his first term. So what happens if he does not get the chance for a second term? Does that leave our national investment in the lurch?
Take the Aflao Border Complex Project as another example. This was another project initiated under the Acheampong regime, designed to give a facelift to the Aflao Border Complex which is the country’s main gateway to the east linking us to our traditional neighbours Togo, Benin and Nigeria.
This project, which was to provide offices and residential accommodation for the various institutions operating at the border, including the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, the Ghana Immigration Service and the Ghana Police Service, was never completed.
The Pantang Psychiatric Hospital Complex, which was designed to be a one-touch facility, is hanging, with a lot of uncompleted buildings into which huge sums of money have been committed. The list does not end there.
Quite recently, in 2006, to be precise, a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Kwadwo Asenso- Okyere, started the construction of a stadium complex for the university which, after completion, was to host the West Africa University Games in 2008. More than four years down the line, the stadium project has stalled and the place has become home to squatters.
Sure, there should be a more serious approach to national projects. We cannot continue to abandon projects midway and expect to start new ones with better results. If all these abandoned projects will be reactivated and completed, there is no doubt that this country will experience a major facelift.
These projects are financed by the taxpayer’s money and should not be allowed to go waste at the pleasure of any person or groups of persons. We cannot continue to complain of lack of resources if we allow projects to go waste because some people think their personal interests are not at stake.
The idea that the National Development Planning Commission should be depoliticised to serve as the brokerage of all national projects should be given serious attention, since, left to the Executive alone, we shall continue to count more uncompleted projects.
Anytime I see the uncompleted MDPI building complex at Baatsona which has now been encircled by private buildings; anytime I see the uncompleted National Science Museum; anytime I think of the Kumasi Asafo-Sofoline Interchange, the Achimota-Ofankor, Nsawam-Apedwa, Tetteh Quarshie-Adenta roads, I know we have a long way to go as a nation.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com