Who Governs Ghana’s Roads?

Ghanafuor, symbolism matters. In the age of AI and viral social media posts, images travel faster than statutes, and what citizens see repeated on their feeds becomes their understanding of law itself. When a vehicle without registration plates moves freely through Accra or Kumasi, it does not merely commit a traffic offence. It broadcasts a more dangerous message: that rules are optional, that authority is negotiable, that the Republic has exceptions.

This is why the demand on the DVLA is simple and non-negotiable. With the exception of vehicles in the presidential fleet when conveying the President of the Republic on public roads, no other vehicle — regardless of ownership or status, including those of the Asantehene — should traverse Ghana’s roads without valid registration plates. Full stop.

Let me be clear. This is not a rebuke of the Asantehene, who is widely regarded as law-abiding and peace-loving. The responsibility lies instead with those extremist tribal-supremacist advisers who counsel him to flout a law that applies to every Ghanaian. Their counsel is an abomination in the eyes of the Leviathan that is our Republic — the sovereign authority that, lest we forget, holds the power of life and death over all who reside within its borders. Hmmm, 3y3asem oooo.

On a strictly legal basis, Ghana is a unitary and indivisible Republic. There is no “state within a state” recognised by our Constitution. To permit exceptions for traditional authority, political influence, or wealth is to corrode the very idea of legal supremacy. If registration plates are optional for some, they become meaningless for all. And when laws become meaningless, democracy itself frays.

The DVLA CEO must put his foot down. Enforcement cannot be selective if it is to be credible. In an AI era where a single photograph can shape public perception more than a thousand legal briefs, the state must insist that symbols align with substance. The sight of every vehicle bearing plates is a daily civic lesson: no one is above the law.

This is not about disrespecting tradition. Far from it. It is about protecting it by placing it firmly within the constitutional order that guarantees peace and stability for all Ghanaians, regardless of ethnicity, in a nation in which no tribe is inferior or superior to another; and in which virtually all extended family clans are of different ethnicities, united by ties of consanguinity and marriage, coexisting peacefully. Case closed. Wake up, oooo, Ghanafuor. Yooooooooooo. A word to the wise…

Hmmm, Anansesemkrom Ghana paaa diy33. Tweaaaaaaaaaa…