Bury the Shovel

On Saturday, 6 June 2026, Speaker of Parliament Alban Bagbin stood before paramount chiefs, government ministers, and an assembled crowd in Wa to cut a sod — then spent a portion of his speech reassuring them that this was not an empty political promise. He called it proof of commitment. He quoted local proverbs. He named critics publicly.

Let that sink in for a moment. The very ceremony designed to inspire public confidence in a project had become a platform for defending it against public scepticism. A ritual meant to signal that something is beginning has become so thoroughly discredited that leaders now need speeches to argue that this time, it is real.

That is the story of sod-cutting in Ghana in 2026. And it is a story that must end.

I. The Ritual and What It Was Supposed to Mean

The groundbreaking ceremony is not uniquely Ghanaian. Across the world, governments mark the commencement of major infrastructure with public ceremonies. The logic is reasonable: you are telling the community that their tax cedi — or borrowed dollar — has been committed. You are creating a visible milestone. You are inviting scrutiny.

In its purest form, the sod-cutting ceremony is an accountability tool. A date. A location. A contractor's name. A promise made in public, before cameras, before chiefs, before constituents. If the project does not materialise, the public has a reference point for betrayal.

But something went deeply wrong. Somewhere between the spade and the speech, Ghana's political class discovered that the ceremony itself could be harvested for political capital — entirely independent of whether any construction ever followed.

II. The Evidence: Sods Without Foundations

The cases are not few. They are not partisan. They cut across governments, regions, and sectors.

In 2007, President Kufuor cut a sod in Kumasi for a 50-megawatt waste-to-energy plant, to be built by Canadian firm CINERGEX Solutions at a cost of USD 135 million. The plant was to tackle waste management and reduce dependence on Akosombo. The sod was cut. The crowds cheered. The plant was never built.

Under former President John Mahama, a sod-cutting was held for the second phase of the Kumasi International Airport expansion. Veteran journalist Kweku Baako later produced documents showing that the contractor supposedly "on-site" had not begun any work at all. According to Baako, the Ghana Airports Company and the Ministry of Transport allegedly arranged for workers to clear and fence the land purely for the ceremony. The performance security for the project was not even delivered until more than a year after the sod was cut.

President Akufo-Addo, in August 2024, cut the sod for the multi-billion-dollar Petroleum Hub in Jomoro — a project that has been announced, re-announced, and ceremonialised across multiple administrations. As of early 2026, communities in that corridor are still waiting.

Under the current Mahama administration, September 2025 saw a major sod-cutting exercise for roads under the Big Push Agenda. The Ghanaian Times, in a measured but sober editorial, welcomed the initiative while noting that the Roads Ministry already owes contractors approximately GH¢40 billion, with little physical output to show for it. The editorial asked what many Ghanaians were already asking privately: is this commitment, or choreography?

The sod is cut. The canopy is packed away. The minister's convoy drives off. And the community waits — sometimes for months, sometimes for years, sometimes forever.

III. The Electoral Exploitation
The relationship between sod-cutting ceremonies and Ghana's electoral calendar is not coincidental. It is structural.

In election years, groundbreaking ceremonies multiply. District assemblies organise them. Ministers tour constituencies with shovels. Presidents cut sods for hospitals, roads, markets, and industrial parks — sometimes in the same week. The logic is raw and undisguised: the ceremony generates news coverage, mobilises supporters, and creates the impression of an active, delivering government without the burden of actually delivering.

When the election is won, the incentive evaporates. Projects stall. Contractors demobilise. Communities are left with mounds of turned earth and faded bunting. The new government arrives, cuts their own sods for their own projects — sometimes on the very same sites — and the cycle begins again.

This is not governance. It is performance. And Ghanaians, increasingly, know the difference.

IV. The Costs Nobody Calculates
There is a financial cost to every sod-cutting ceremony that nobody adds up. Canopies. Chairs. Sound systems. Protocol staff. Security deployment. Police outriders. Media catering. Branded T-shirts and cloth. District coordinating council logistics. The minister's entourage. Transportation for community members bused in to fill the crowd.

For high-profile national events, these costs run into the hundreds of thousands of cedis — for a ceremony. Not a project. A ceremony.

But the greater cost is not financial. It is the erosion of institutional trust. Every abandoned sod deepens the cynicism of a citizenry that has watched too many promises dissolve into broken ground. Every president who has to assure a crowd that "this time is different" is spending credibility that governance cannot easily earn back.

The damage to Ghana's investment and donor environment is also real. Development partners who fund infrastructure projects watch these patterns. When a sod is cut for a project that lacks confirmed financing, a signed contractor, or a clear implementation timeline, it sends a signal: this country's development commitments may be theatrical. That perception has consequences.

V. The Reform Argument: Replace Ceremony With Accountability

The case against sod-cutting ceremonies is not a case against development celebration. Communities deserve to see, touch, and mark the beginning of infrastructure that affects their lives. The case is against ceremony divorced from substance — against cutting sods before the preconditions for actual construction are in place.

What should replace it? A Project Commencement Verification Protocol.

The principle is straightforward: no public ceremony, no media event, no presidential visit marking the "beginning" of a project unless the following conditions are independently verified and publicly disclosed. One: a signed contract, with the contractor's name, scope, and completion timeline published. Two: confirmed financing — either appropriated in the budget or confirmed in writing by a lender or development partner. Three: a contractor physically on-site, confirmed by an independent public works official, not a ceremonial site-clearing. Four: a designated monitoring contact — a district-level official or civil society partner — whose name is published and who is responsible for quarterly updates to the community.

If these conditions are met, celebrate. Bring the chiefs. Bring the cameras. Let the member of parliament speak. A groundbreaking under these terms is genuinely newsworthy.

If they are not met, there is nothing to celebrate. Issue a press release. Update the constituency. Call it what it is: an intention, pending conditions.

VI. The PR Lens: This Is a Reputation Crisis

For those who approach this from a communications and governance perspective, what we are witnessing is a severe institutional credibility crisis — and the sod-cutting ceremony is both its symptom and its accelerant.

Public trust in government is not built through declarations. It is built through demonstrated alignment between words and action, between announcement and delivery, between the shovel and the structure. When that alignment breaks down consistently, across governments, across parties, across regions, the population stops trusting the communication — and eventually stops trusting the institution.

Ghana's governance brand has been taking this hit for decades. The question is whether the country's leadership class has the institutional imagination to change it.

The answer does not require new laws. It requires political will and public pressure. Civil society organisations, media houses, and professional bodies — including communicators and public relations practitioners — should refuse to normalise the abandoned sod. Every project announced with a ceremony should be tracked. Every ceremony without a completed project should be named, documented, and held against the record of the responsible official.

That is not opposition politics. That is the bare minimum of accountability journalism and civic practice in a democracy.

Conclusion: The Spade Is Not Enough
Ghana is a country with genuine infrastructure gaps. Broken roads. Inadequate hospitals. Overcrowded schools. Flooded communities. These are not abstract problems. They are the daily conditions of millions of citizens who pay taxes, vote in elections, and deserve functional government.

Those citizens do not need ceremonies. They need completed roads. They need hospitals with equipment in them. They need markets with roofs that do not leak. They need the dignity of promises kept.

The sod-cutting ceremony, in its current form, is an insult dressed in protocol. It is the state performing development for an audience instead of delivering development to a community.

Ghana has celebrated enough intentions. It is time to start celebrating completions.

. Pick up the keys.
About the Author
Rexford Adjei Darko is a Public Relations Practitioner, Governance & AI Advocate and CSR Researcher. He holds an MA in Public Relations from the Ghana Institute of Journalism and is a member of the Africa Public Relations Association (APRA) and IPR-Ghana.

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