Twenty-Two years ago, on a Sunday night in November, the Tema Motorway was the scene of a heavy security presence. And traffic. Motorists from both ends of the road were ordered to stop until further notice.
An accident had occurred. The personalities involved were not the everyday people in our towns and villages who fought Trotro mates over coins; the casualties were Former President Jerry John Rawlings, some family members, and some of his security guards.
He survived the accident. Others were not so lucky. A driver of a minivan accused of causing the accident was later arrested and arraigned before court. Unfortunately, he also passed. There were lots of theories that hovered around his death. Elections were days away.
However, the accident drowned the voluminous campaign messages and the avalanche of promises thrown at the electorates. The few electronic media outlets in Accra, especially, jostled each other for the contacts of persons skilled in road safety issues. They diagnosed the problem and prescribed the necessary antidote, per their knowledge. Those who had the power and could act on the prescribed solutions also pretended not to have heard them. At the end of the day, and with the elections temperature heating up, everyone returned to snoring mode.
It is important to state that before the late President’s accident, there had been a series of them, but they were seen as part and parcel of our everyday lives. Those involved were just ordinary people destined to die anyway, so what was so newsy about their tragic passing? Apart from family relatives who wailed at their funerals and later sat down to drink beer and the locally brewed Akpeteshie to drown away their sorrows, they were just statistics for making road safety arguments. They were “low profile persons!”
It is safe to say the Motorway at the time had not developed visible cracks to threaten the joy of motorists. Or even if the cracks existed, they were not visible to the eyes. But same cannot be said today. Today’s Motorway is wretched, battered, beaten, scorned, rotten and despised. It remains an open sore infested with maggots that desperately needs surgical attention but has been ignored by those responsible for its rehabilitation.
The Motorway is a little over 50 years, and experts have told us it needs rehabilitation before it completely falls apart. Their POTHOLES are not new to those tasked with the power and perks to fix them. Recently when the Ministry of Roads and Highways decided to embark on maintenance works on the Lakplakpa River Bridge, the expectation was that when the final works were done, the adjoining POTHOLES would be fixed. But to the disappointment and dismay of motorists, the POTHOLES were left on their own. It had to take continuous social media advocacy for engineers from the ministry to get down to work on them.
The outcome of the work they did, even from a non-engineering point of view, was pathetic. They just poured into those potholes what looked like poorly blended bitumen mixed with sand. It did not take even a month, and the so-called work started deteriorating. The cracks are so opened it is virtually impossible to drive on the stretch with any joy. From either Tema or Accra bounds, the roads have developed dangerous cracks that even show the metals hidden in the concrete.
I have witnessed how a motorbike rider slumped into one of the POTHOLES after the repaired bridge threw him off his bike, which ended up in the bush. The rider could have been run over by a Toyota Corolla, which decided to switch over to the left before the accident occurred. I sat in the front row of a public transport, and my heart skipped a beat.
Apart from that rider, I have seen and read accounts of other near-death experiences on the Motorway, where drivers who attempted to swerve the POTHOLES ended up driving in front of approaching drivers, which resulted in dangerous accidents. Others have also shared with me their near-death encounters on the Motorway, which is not pleasant.
The accident rate on the Motorway in recent times has been terrible. It is like a one-day-one-accident, and the vehicles often caught up in the incidents are big trucks that had skidded off the road into the bush or smashed into other cars.
I have read reports in the media about the Motorway getting a facelift but not sure when exactly that will happen. But while we wait for it, I wonder why the existing POTHOLES cannot be resolved to ease the torture motorists endure on the stretch.
The problem with the Motorway is such a strange one, and I always wonder why. For example, why do we have light poles planted through the entire stretch, but almost the entire place is covered in mountainous darkness? More political party flags are mounted on the light poles than actual lights to illuminate the stretch.
Also, the abandoned tollbooths, if they are no longer going to be used, ought to go. A friend almost lost his life when his vehicle plunged into the one at the Accra end of the Motorway. I saw the mangled car, and we both agreed an unseen hand had saved him.
As citizens and motorists on the road, we deserve a lot better than this.