I wrote this article in response to the recent demolishing of house conducted by Tema Development Corporation (TDC) and duly authorized by the state. 

The state deployed its police and military to oversee the exercise as reported. Surprisingly, the Greater Accra Lands officer Alhaji M.A. Alhassan who was contacted by Joy News said that his office will hold talks with the TDC to look into the matter. To look into what matter again?

The state machinery including TDC, the Greater Accra Lands Commission, the police and military all saw these people clearing the lands, putting up the buildings and living in them until 22 January 2014.

With the same police and military, couldn’t TDC have prevented these people from putting up the buildings in the first place? Why must the state allow people to do something ‘illegal’ only for it to busy itself trying to fix it?

Ridiculously, the persons conducting and overseeing the demolition exercise thought they are enforcing the law. In responsible states, common sense suggests that these people would have been ‘estoppelled’. Ordinary workers have donkey-worked themselves for years to put up buildings which were flattened in matter of minutes in no where but the nation’s capital and not even far away from the Presidency.

What is the demolition exercise showing the general public?  The exercise evokes fear, panic and disgust among we the ordinary people. It only serves to increase our sympathy towards the victims—victims in the true sense of the word victim.

They are victims because every one knows that many of them have documents covering their plots. We all know that even in villages, people seek permission from traditional leaders before putting up buildings. These victims most likely sought permissions and got approval from the seemingly right persons. Even if the documents they possessed are fake as suggested by the Greater Accra Lands officer Alhaji M.A Alhassan, they were issued by known officers at the same office he occupies.

In response to this exercise, the public are compelled to mistrust, suspect and disrespect authority. At the peak, the demolition shows irresponsible statehood.

How would a responsible state have dealt with the issue? The construction of buildings at unapproved locations is no news in Ghana. Thus, the institutions of the state, if it were responsible, would have institutionalized mechanisms to deal with it permanently.

The root causes, which have been left unattended to, are not the focus of this write-up; I focus on a single event and its players whose activities trigger, stimulate and perpetuate the construction of illegal structures. My next write-up will focus on the some of the persons behind the construction of the illegal structures.

The single event which I would like the reading public to assist me to investigate fully goes like this (I urge you all readers to use this story to figure out the people who promote the sprigging up of illegal structures in our towns and cities). On the morning of Sunday, 9 June, 2013, a police pickup drove straight to the forecourt of the Lapaz New Market in Accra here. The police officer first got down and as usual wielded his gun as if he was in the war-torn Kandahar Province of Afghanistan.

Some two persons got down with containers and brush. Sooner, one of them started scribbling their usual warning signs. He marked every container, every kiosk, every table and any other structure used for trading in the market. What was the essence of these marks? Probably to decongest the city.

The following Monday morning, the leadership of the market deployed its somehow previously constituted team of collectors to take monies from every trader in the market. Petty traders using tables paid GH¢10 each, while others paid ¢20.

Yet those in bigger containers paid more, with owners of chop bars paying the highest amount. Again, what was the essence of collecting the said monies? Casually, the traders I interviewed told me that it was a norm for such monies to be collected from them. They even mentioned the names of some individuals within Abeka and Lapaz who they claimed periodically go the AMA to instruct the assembly to come and collect such monies. Such monies, the traders said, are then shared among the assembly members involved the said individuals.

I thought this time round, the assembly meant business because the exercise was well coordinated—a team of police personnel and AMA officials working on a Sunday.

Lo and behold, ever since the said monies were taken by the leadership of the market and purportedly paid to the AMA officers involved, the said tables, containers and chop bars stand till today with the marks still visible on them (see figures above). What kind of state are we building?

I am appealing to reading public to conduct proper investigation into this issue and said culprits dealt with. If you visit the market to see these ‘poor’ traders struggling all through the day, no one tells you how long it takes some of them to get a net profit of GH ¢5 only for some few persons to manipulate the whole state apparatus to rub them in broad day light.

Since then, I keep on imagining what is happening in the villages if such activities can be conducted so openly in the nation’s capital like this. How on Earth do politicians and other state officials think they deserve an iota of respect? Before withdrawing my fingers from the keyboard, I promise any group interested in pursuing this matter to contact me.