A New Or Extension Of Capital For Ghana?

Stultitea delenda est - Stupidity must be destroyed

I was alarmed when I first read that President Mahama wanted to build a new capital for Ghana and move some government departments there because Accra has become congested. I therefore raised objections to the idea, but was written off by the usual social media mob as repeating an outlandish rumour. Now that President Mahama has finally elaborated on his intent, I have no choice than to put into writing why the solution to the problem of congestion in central Accra the President is advocating is not the best option. In fact, it is the first of its kind, but that does not make it right. Milton Keynes in the UK, for instance, was built in 1967 to relieve the housing congestion in London; same way Saglemi was being built.

It is not much different from the so-called hybrid oil fiscal regime contained in the “garbage law” Act 919, which President Mahama was misled to sign, after the colossal inducement of over $627m paid to the MPs alone by the FOCs; not to mention the dollars and pounds spread upon others “like confetti,” to quote Mr T.K.A. Hammond, ex-MP. And, it certainly sounds just like the maddening idea of building a national cathedral, so far as I am concerned. Or the outlandish idea of turning Republic Day into a national day of prayers and thanksgiving to God, for sparing us from the violence bedevilling other African countries, when parts of northern Ghana are steeped in violence, too. As an ardent pro-Nkrumahist, I have expressed far better reasons for restoring Republic Day to its former pre-coup status and much better to mark the quest for economic independence that Nkrumah said to Gold Coasters, rather naively but very effective politically: seek ye first political independence and everything else shall be added. So, in consonance with my assumed mission to challenge bad, silly ideas, emanating especially from government sources, with the intention to nip them in the bud, I am writing this article to outline why it is not the best idea to relieve Accra of congestion by moving some government departments out of Accra into the Eastern and Volta Regions.

Better solutions have been put forward to solve the insane and unplanned urbanisation of African capital cities, expected to grow into super mega-cities in the next 50-75 cities, that is, by 2100. Building new capital cities have not featured in the solutions to the problems, and that idea should be considered as otiose, i.e., archaic, as some words in the Webster Dictionary; and be put back into the garbage can of development thinking and history, where President Mahama picked it up from and dressed it for the consumption of the unassuming public. Yes, I know some think they know better and support the idea, but they are just as ignorant, having probably not read a single article on the subject of population growth in Africa, or given it critical thought. Yes, they are as ignorant as most Ghanaians still are about what Production Sharing Agreement or Contract means and entails, as President Mahama himself is, despite all our efforts to educate him, his government, MPs and the public on the subject. Pardon me for the digression, but I just could not forget that abomination.

Do not blame us for not being effective teachers. We were faced with pupils who refused to read, and/or chose to be willfully or silently ignorant, a situation we have covered extensively in a recent petition to the Presidency and made available to the public, too. It is one thing dragging the horse to the river, another thing making it drink the water if it does not wish to. The fact that one knows that 1+1=2 does not mean that one can prove why 1+1=2. So, if you have learned that Nigeria, Tanzania and Brazil built new capitals, were they built in order to relieve congestion in their previous capitals? Are you aware that Lagos is projected to be 100m in population by 2100 and the Tanzanians are planning another new capital after Dodoma while Dar es Salaam is projected to be one of the world's megapolises by 2100? In any case, those new capitals were not built because their old capitals were congested; the main reason was centrality to the whole country. It’d amount, therefore, to committing the fallacy of affirming the consequent, - in an a posteriori argument - to use the success or otherwise of those new capitals to justify building a new capital for Ghana on the basis of Accra being congested.

However, President Mahama’s plan is not even similar to what some, for example, those from the northern part of Ghana in particular, have been calling for: a new capital to be situated centrally at say Kintampo or Buipe in order to bring government services closer to them, too. The plan is rather the extension of the capital into the Eastern Region and Volta Region. I can imagine it’d be based on the new railway link to Mpakadan and the Volifo Bridge. By all means, those new transport routes must be exploited to the maximum benefit, but the current problem of population movement to the south due to better opportunities for jobs, education, etc., provided in the coastal areas will not be solved, but rather compounded. Government services are not the only causes of congestion in central Accra that must be taken care of. In fact, it is doubtful if it is even the major cause now. Moreover, even crucial sectors of the economy are also facing the negative impacts of congestion in central Accra.

It is not governmental functions [alone] that make capital cities big and congested and need dealing with, but the failure to develop other parts of a country plays a major role, as clearly demonstrated by the growth in Lagos and Dar es Salaam, the latter despite Nyerere’s Ujamaa villagisation policy to develop villages out of scattered hamlets and nomads.

There is a new and better alternative proposal since the ‘90s to deal with the multifaceted, booming population problems faced by African nations, which I subscribed to and have been advocating since the mid-90s. Besides writing on how the state organs must be restructured, I had written on how this can be implemented in the rural areas. I drew inspiration from the publication by two former World Bank staff, Kevin M. Cleaver and Gotz A. Schreiber, Reversing the Spiral: The Population, Agriculture and Environment Nexus in Sub-Saharan Africa (1994), a review of which I presented at an international conference in Aas, Norway, in 1995. Their proposal is similar to the plan recommended to President Akufo-Addo by the renowned Singaporean architect he brought to plan Accra soon upon assumption of office, and then packed and left the country. Are President Mahama and his advisers privy to this report? The problem lies not with Accra, but with the individuals governing the country from Accra. Those who plan new residential estates without shopping centres, or permitted encroachment on lands allocated for such amenities.

In a nutshell, what is the alternative plan? Provide first-rate amenities to all the district capitals and some selected central towns in each district, with serviced industrial and commercial parks demarcated. Set up appropriate small-scale industries in them with local shareholders. The state must be brought back into investment in economic ventures, and the hollow trope of the SAP years of the “private sector is the engine of growth” be jettisoned. That is not what happened in Asia to project then to their development statuses. Books were being written as far back as the 1980s about how their various states were central to their economic transformations. Only ignorant Africans are not aware of them.

The crucial concurrent action is to deal with the governmental problem is to decentralise and devolve government services to the regional and district levels. It is that straightforward. The challenge lies in how to implement that.

Modern means of communication have far outpaced organisational change. Governance institutions, in particular, have remained unchanged for rather too long, some for over a century. With the Western plural democracies morphing into oligarchic plutocracies turning on the people in a manner which would make Draco green with envy, we must intellectualise and reshape our own system of governance that really serves the people, instead of a few over-pampered elite Mahama’s plan intend to serve. Even at the undergraduate political science level, we were introduced to how poor communication negatively reshaped the evolution of initial democratic ideas and institutions, and how anticipated advancement in modern communication should impact such institutions in Karl Deutsch’s book, Politics and Government, we used. He had published a lot on the subject and so, it is therefore a pity that scholars and students of Organisation Theory and Administration have not been fecund in coming out with organisational changes that inure better to us in various ways - democratically and administratively - in view of the advancement in ICT.

In fact, Parliament is even redundant, as citizens can participate in national debates from the comfort of their homes and vote on issues remotely using their phones. It is therefore ripe to decentralise and devolve much of central government functions to the local and district levels. Rather than doing this, we have witnessed a rapacious elite centralising and doling out as patronage to political hacks even what was being done locally before, such as sanitation, collection of property rates, food purchases for schools, etc. Currently, a huge proportion of the national revenue is expended on state employees, leaving very little to expend on development for the people. It is a vexing issue which has been addressed by my good friend Femi in his characteristics no holds barred style when he tackled the humongous ex gratia wards they receive. The amount so far spent on the new BoG edifice could have completed all the E-schools and eliminated all schools under trees and in dilapidated structures.

The coastal corridor from Abidjan to Lagos is projected to be a demographic nightmare in the next 50 years to 2100, if the population growth trend continues, which President Mahama's plan would certainly fuel. It used to take 1 hour to drive to Accra from Anloga but now, it takes several hours, so why bring more population nightmare to the south? Sure, we should not be going to Accra for some government services such as passports and licences, but equally, the solution is NOT driving or travelling to Buipe or Kintampo or somewhere in the the ER and VR in order to renew a passport or get documents for lands in Half Assini, Hatorgodo, or Kulungungu, when people in Dubai are renewing their driving licences from slot machines in shopping centres.

This article is intended to be just a brief introduction to the issue, and so I have not dwelt on tackling congestion in Accra per se, by suggesting, for example, introducing a congestion charge as in London. A full article is required to do that. However, I had written on how the so-called in-filling project whereby government lands were being sold off cheaply by the party hacks to favourites should have been done to ease congestion caused by junior civil servants commuting to central Accra. Such lands, I wrote, should be used to build high rise apartments for them. That article is also attached. Also attached is how the state itself should be tamed with suggestions for some institutional changes at the regional and district levels.

1 https://www.modernghana.com/news/369996/opening-up-the-rural-areas-of-ghana-part-1.html