Call a Spade a Spade: President Mahama Must Deploy the Military and VRA to Reclaim Our Ramsar Sites

The primary currency of governance in modern Ghana has degenerated into a cyclical stream of elegant condolences, reactionary tours, and political taglines. Following the severe deluge that flooded Accra on June 29, 2026, the rhetoric of resetting our development trajectory remains loud, yet the reality remains completely underwater. Statecraft cannot survive on the coddling of elite lawlessness and the perpetual pampering of institutions that fail to protect the public purse. As prominent columnist Atitso Akpalu on Modern Ghana sharply observes, "Meaningful reform will not originate from the benevolence of an interested legislature; it must be driven by executive courage, rigorous judicial review, and the organized voice of an informed public". The pampering of politically insulated encroachers must stop now; national resources must be aggressively redirected away from endless emergency relief funding and into direct, military-backed developmental fortification.

The Empirical Toll: Financial Evaporation and Broken Capital

Flooding in the Greater Accra Region is no longer just a periodic urban inconvenience; it is a permanent, multi-million cedi tax on the Ghanaian economy that destroys state revenue and private assets alike.

• National Wealth Bleeding: Data from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) confirms that disasters drain Ghana of approximately GH¢300 million every single year, with the Greater Accra Region alone accounting for GH¢200 million of these recurring losses.
• The Multimillion-Dollar Drain: Macro-level economic assessments indicate that over the past few decades, more than 4 million citizens have been severely disrupted by floods, leading to aggregate historical damages exceeding USD $780 million.
• Billions in Asset Exposure: The World Bank warns that USD $3.2 billion worth of strategic economic assets inside Greater Accra—a region driving over 40% of our non-oil GDP—are currently sitting directly in high-risk zones.
• Individual Devastation: Beyond macroeconomics, local capital is systematically decimated. Past catastrophic floods have wiped out over $108 million in food and agricultural commerce, permanently crippling the small-scale market women, informal traders, and middle-class entrepreneurs who hold the fabric of our indigenous economy together.

The Kpeshie Lagoon Precedent: The Case for Military Speed and Cost Savings

Have we forgotten what disciplined, professional engineering can achieve when civilian bureaucracy fails?

• The Sapper Advantage: When commercial projects along the La-Teshie beach road stalled, paralyzing commuter traffic, it was the 48 Engineer Regiment that stepped in. Their swift, precise construction of the temporary Bailey Bridge over the Kpeshie Lagoon serves as an undeniable proof of concept.
• Massive Cost Savings: Utilizing the military eliminates the inflated, corrupt pricing structures associated with private contractors and middlemen. The state pays for output, not bureaucratic overhead.
• Uncompromising Professional Experience: The military brings logistical speed, structural discipline, and complete political neutrality. Unlike civilian municipal task forces, the military cannot be bribed or slowed down by local political godfathers.

Targeting the Encroachments: Restoring True Historical Baselines

The degradation of our natural buffer zones has reached a critical flashpoint, requiring immediate, pinpoint enforcement to restore these sites back to their globally recognized specifications:

• The Shrinking Kpeshie Lagoon: Satellite mapping and environmental tracking put the center of the critical marshy plain around geographic coordinates 5°34'0" N, 0°8'0" W (situated between the Whittier Barracks corridor to the east and the La-Trade Fair corridor to the west). Uncontrolled construction has choked this outlet, dropping waterbody coverage across the basin down to a catastrophic 0.49%.
• The Sakumo Ramsar Boundary: Located further down the coast at coordinates 5°30'N, 0°08'W, this internationally recognized ecosystem spans an official, world-recorded baseline of 1,364.35 hectares. Massive concrete estates have drastically cut into its vegetal and water holding capacity, leaving nearby communities highly vulnerable.

Strategic Structural Directives for President Mahama

To match words with empirical output, the presidency must immediately shift sovereign assets out of administrative paralysis and into direct mechanical defense:

• Direct Mobilization of the 48 Engineer Regiment: President Mahama must exercise executive command to deploy the military field engineers and sappers to clear all illegal structures violating the wetland buffer zones. The Sappers must take direct charge of clearing the rubble out of natural channels to ensure water flows unobstructed to the sea.
• Commandeer Volta River Authority (VRA) Heavy Machinery: Instead of constantly spending hundreds of millions of cedis on temporary, ineffective drain-cleaning contracts, national capital must be redirected. The state must immediately commandeer high-capacity industrial dredging equipment from the VRA to systematically deep-dredge the Odaw River Basin, clear the Ramsar wetlands, and widen critical coastal outfalls.
• Enforce the Punitive Mandates of the Land Act, 2020 (Act 1036): Under Sections 9 and 13 of the Act, public land administrators act strictly as trustees for the people. To quote Akpalu’s direct legal warning on the Modern Ghana platform, "The tragedy of the Ghanaian situation is that our laws explicitly prohibit these practices, yet enforcement remains selective... Section 236 of the Act explicitly criminalizes the unlawful appropriation, sale, or conveyance of public land, providing a clear path for prosecution".

A Defining Legacy for the "Reset Agenda"

This urgent intervention presents President John Dramani Mahama with an unprecedented historical crossroads to turn a political platform into a permanent national monument. The "Reset Agenda" must not be remembered as a collection of well-phrased campaign speeches, but as the exact moment Ghana reclaimed its structural sanity, territorial discipline, and rule of law. By bypassing standard bureaucratic inertia and giving the 48 Engineer Regiment and the VRA a direct, uncompromised mandate, the President can anchor his administration on a transformative historical legacy.

True political legacy is not carved into temporary plaques or measured in bags of rice distributed after a disaster; it is measured in the communities that no longer flood, the indigenous capital that is successfully insulated from ruin, and the public purse that is permanently saved from fiscal waste. Executing this bold, military-backed ecological restoration will signal to every Ghanaian that the era of pampering lawlessness is officially dead.

The continuous allocation of scarce national resources toward post-disaster distribution is an exercise in fiscal insanity. The state cannot continue to secure millions of dollars in international resilience credit lines while simultaneously allowing well-connected individuals to illegalize our natural waterways with impunity. The "Reset Agenda" will either be written in the clear lines of military discipline, restored wetlands, and massive cost savings, or it will be washed away as yet another footnote in our history of administrative failure. The Bailey Bridge over the Kpeshie Lagoon proved that our soldiers can build and protect this nation's infrastructure when called upon. We urge President Mahama as Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces to seize this moment, exercise the full weight of his sovereign executive authority, give the military the command to reclaim our Ramsar sites, and leave behind a safer, resilient, and structurally disciplined Ghana for generations to come.

✍️ Retired Senior Citizen
For and on behalf of all Senior Citizens of the Republic of Ghana 🇬🇭

Teshie‑Nungua
akpaluck@gmail.com

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