Let us put politics aside. Let us put our emotions aside. Let us shelve religious beliefs for a moment. Let us put our thinking caps on. Let us behave like rational human beings of the world, human beings who deserve to be taken seriously and treated with the same level of respect the Americans, British, Germans and the French would require from the rest of the world. Let us think like a country or a people who take human lives seriously. Let us think rationally and use commonsense approach to the Kintampo Waterfall disaster that has left people with heartache.
Nineteen (19) young people, mostly senior high school students were killed on Sunday at the Kintampo Waterfall. They were 15 students of the Wenchi Senior High School in the Bono (Brong) Ahafo Region, a national service person and three university students in that region. The report is that the students were there on an excursion when it rained. The rain was accompanied by a heavy storm that uprooted some trees around the waterfall. The falling trees crushed and killed the students.
The rainstorm is an act of nature. We cannot control that. What we can to do as human beings is to mitigate the unpredictable wrath of nature anytime it strikes. Life is basically about our interaction with nature, how to take advantage of nature’s best and avoid the devastating effects of nature’s worst. Elsewhere, hurricanes and other destructive forces of nature are forecasted. Towns and cities are sometimes evacuated many days before the disaster arrives.
We cannot blame the managers of the waterfall for not stopping the rainstorm. But anybody who owns smartphone can know how the weather in a particular area will be on any given day. Granted that the managers of the Kintampo Waterfall had no smartphones and did not know that it would rain that day, did they not see the build up to the rainstorm? When people are at a waterfall and it is threatening to rain, do you keep the people there?
When the weather changed and there were signs of rain, what did managers of the waterfall do? If the children were asked to leave the waterfall immediately the clouds started forming, could we have saved the lives of these children? The lawyers will say someone owed the children a duty of care when they paid to use the facility.
The most disheartening part of this narrative is that, at the time of the accident, the waterfall was not being managed by the persons mandated to be there. The waterfall was forcibly taken over by members of the Invisible Forces, thugs who are members of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP). Since the party won the December 2016 elections, these thugs have seized and locked up public some places. In some places, they took over the management of such facilities. In the wake of the Kintampo Waterfall disaster, some of these thugs have been granting media interviews. They have confirmed they took over the running of the facility from the district assembly and account to the leadership of the party in the constituency.
Thirty-six (36) hours after the incident, no single person has been arrested. And it is not likely that any of these thugs will be touched. When a dog or gorilla is killed in America, someone is likely to be held responsible. When scores of persons are killed in Ghana, however, nobody gets punished.
We woke up one morning in Accra in June 2015 to the horrific deaths of people around the city centre. The government’s official number of deaths recorded in the flood and fire disaster was 152. But people who witnessed the incident believe the number of deaths was much higher. But 152 deaths is not a child’s play. The flood was caused by the inability of city authorities to manage the drainage system of Ghana’s capital, Accra. And the fire was caused by fuel that leaked from unsecured underground tanks of a filling station and mixed with the floodwaters and carried the fire across the Kwame Nkrumah Circle area. The only person who was held for questioning was a gentleman who was said to have smoked a cigarette and thrown the tub into the flood. Since when has it become a crime to throw a cigarette tub in water?
When the Mayor of Accra was asked by the BBC whether he would apologise to the people of Ghana for what had happened, he said he owed nobody and apology. A few weeks later, he picked up forms amidst drumming, dancing and singing to contest as a member of parliament. Today, he is a member of parliament and is addressed HONOURABLE. The memory of the people who lost their lives, sources of livelihoods that are lost forever, and the imaginable pain that is forever etched on the hearts and minds of their loved ones is only kept by those who suffered the disaster. We have moved on. In Ghana, we die like dogs. No person was held to account for anything, so there is no deterrence.
The Vice President of the Republic of Ghana has led a government delegation to Kintampo to console the bereaved and visit the injured. He has promised government’s support to them. Financial support. But that should not end.
The Invisible Forces angle should not be allowed to die. We have a president who spent the past four decades of his life fighting for democracy and the rule of law. Today, he is presiding over the rule of anarchy in a survival-of-the-fittest-jungle. The seizures and lock ups and vandalism that have accompanied the victory of the NPP have gone unpunished. And that MAY have been the reason for the loss of lives at Kintampo.
If the legitimate managers of the Kintampo Waterfall were in charge of the facility, a different story may have been told. They could not have stopped the rainstorm, but they may have evacuated the tourists in time before the deadly trees came tumbling onto the leisure facility. Media reports said when the trees started to fall, the teacher of the students asked them to move from one place to another, but that place turned out to be deadlier. The tourists were left to their fate in the confusion of the disaster, to be tossed around and later crushed to death. If the legitimate managers of the waterfall were in charge, they may have suggested a safer place. The Invisible Forces and the constituency party executives who control their actions at the falls should be made to answer for what happened.
This is the only logical and sensible thing to do. If we sit down and say it was an act of God and treat the precious lives that were lost like trash, more mindless killings as a result of negligence will continue to occur and leave pain and perpetual misery in families across the country.
It is time to show leadership. And the president must act. I am aware, important social interventions such as the School Feeding Programme was given to party executives and members who had no competence to run them. But there should be a way of bringing sanity to the situation without the senseless vandalism we have witnessed. There should be open bids and caterers who are qualified should be selected to run them. If the Invisible Forces and surrogates of the NPP are allowed to take over the running of toll booths, toilets and other public facilities, then we should expect the same cycle when the NPP loses power one day.
This madness did not start with the NPP. But it must stop at some point. And that time is now. President Nana Akufo-Addo, a great champion of the rule of law should not sit down and ruin his legacy. He has an opportunity to choose between his legacy and the interest of the state on the one hand, and pleasing his party on the other.
Mr. President, the choice is yours. Choose wisely!
The writer, Manasseh Azure Awuni, is a journalist with Joy 99.7 FM. His email address is azureachebe2@yahoo.com.