Listening to recent debates in the media about the judicious use of revenue from Ghana’s oil find and linking it to the deteriorating nature of Accra, I cannot but agree that Ghana truly needs a freshly built capital city.
Accra with its problems of filth, human and vehicular traffic, perennial flooding, over-population, emergence of slums, among others, is fast losing its status as a modern (millennium) city and efforts at decongestion from the Metropolitan Assembly led in the past by Stanley Adjiri Blankson and currently Alfred Vanderpuije seem not to be yielding fruits.
For a city whose growth has been rapid since its layout was planned in the 1920s to befit the capital of Ghana, “Gateway to Africa”, it would need a massive overhauling of drainage systems, transport systems and other infrastructure which will involve quantum sum of money.
And undertaking this venture against the backdrop of an imminent earthquake will be the worst decision one could think of, corroborating thoughts of emulating our brothers in Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire by re-locating our political capital to a newly built place as they did when they realized Lagos and Abidjan were no longer fit to be their seats of government.
The re-location should be done by a team of experts so as not to give a political colour to the whole exercise and this re-location of the capital city when done will help reduce traffic congestion and ease pressure on over-stretched land and amenities in Accra, the economic capital thereafter and most importantly serve as the best legacy our oil money would have given us.
I hope people in authority especially President Mills considers this and give it a thought and subsequently gather the political will for this venture.
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