Partisan robots, disconnect now. If your brain is hardwired to defend a political colour while fellow citizens drown in the capital, this is not for you. Accra is submerged, and our leaders are watching from dry balconies.

It is 10:00 a.m. on a Monday morning. The sky has poured all night; the city is paralyzed; storm drains are choked to the throat; and water is aggressively reclaiming its territory. Eleven years ago, on June 3, 2015, we watched more than 150 citizens burn and drown in a horrific national trauma. We swore “Never Again.” Eleven years later, we are liars to our dead.

Those of us who have walked with the hundreds of survivors know the reality is far heavier, and the numbers far greater. Behind every statistic is a scarred face, a burnt body, a family torn apart, a livelihood erased.

In court, it is not unusual to see some break down under the trauma and strain. Many cannot afford transport to attend hearings, yet they still show up; determined to see justice through.

Imagine how they pay medical bills that continue to pile up years after the flames were extinguished. Their resilience is remarkable; their pain remains raw.

Let’s be brutally honest: we do not suffer a deficit of laws or policies in this country. Do not let any politician grandstand on TV today and claim we need new legislation. The tools already exist. Ignoring all others, three popular laws stand out; one mandate: enforce or be complicit.

The Criminal and Other Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29) explicitly criminalizes choking drains and littering. The Land Use and Spatial Planning Act, Act 925 gives local authorities the absolute right to demolish buildings on waterways and jail offenders for up to four years. The Local Governance Act, Act 936 mandates MMDCEs to aggressively clear obstructions and charge culprits for demolition.

The laws are alive on paper; leadership is dead in practice. That explains why waterways have become plush residences.

The Justice Isaac Delali Duose Committee Report (2015) laid out a clear blueprint to prevent this exact nightmare; a nightmare we now suffer even when it merely drizzles. But the Report was ignored. Instead of sustained engineering, continuous dredging, and ruthless enforcement of spatial planning, we get reactive media stunts during the rains; absolute silence for the rest of the year.

Worse, the very custodians of our laws are the ones violating them. Politically connected elites actively acquire, construct upon, and even will protected Ramsar ecological sites to their descendants. When those at the top treat zoning laws with lawless impunity, why are we surprised when the city collapses into chaos?

Stop blaming the ordinary citizen who dumps refuse because the assembly failed to build an enforceable, rate funded waste collection system. In the decent cities you failed leaders frequent for vacations, people party and leave a mess too; but they have real leaders who deploy structured municipal systems to keep the city clean.

To think that all of this is water that could be harnessed for food security and the Akosombo Dam that dries up to drive dumsor. What a masterclass in failed leadership?

To every President, Minister, and MMDCE who has held executive privilege, enjoyed the perks of power, and collected the taxes of the state over the last decade: look out your windows at the flooded streets of Accra today. Every avoidable death; every ruined business; every displaced family is on you.

We don’t need your prayers; we don’t need your manifestos; we don’t need your fake empathy. What we need is sustained, ruthless enforcement of our planning laws. Until you find the political backbone to do your jobs, know this truth: you have blood on your hands; history will not wash it off.

That is my take.