Please Don’t Build this Bridge!

Ordinarily, this announcement would have been greeted with glee. Instead, I felt nervous and almost horrified at the very thought of its imagination. The “its,” of course, regards the hint to parliament that the possibility of the Ministry of Transportation (MOT) overseeing the construction of the longest bridge in Ghana may be on the table, as it were.

I was relieved, finally, to hear Mr. Godfrey Tangu Bayon, a deputy minister of transportation, further add that “currently [the MOT] has no plans to construct the longest bridge over the Oti River, to link Krachi West and the Northern Region.

Doubtless, the minister must have been hearing the same voices that I have been hearing, ever since that long bridge in the U.S. state of Minnesota collapsed late last year, sending at least a score of motorists and passengers to their deaths. What is, however, interesting is the fact that at the time of its surreal collapse, the Minnesota bridge was under what engineers described as “cosmetic construction” or minor repair works. We would shortly be provided with conflicting reports regarding the actual condition of the bridge.

One report, the initial one, claimed the bridge to have been in sound condition, like most of the major bridges across this subcontinent of a nation. In other words, noted the original report, the collapse of the bridge must have been due to the workings of some mysterious forces beyond the human ken.

Then, shortly thereafter, a second report was published; this was a more apparently realistic and honest appraisal of the condition of the bridge at the time of its collapse. This second report noted the fact that the structural design of the bridge was some two generations old, which means that long before its rush-hour collapse, the bridge spanning the great Mississippi river ought to have been completely shut down, redesigned and rebuilt.

The point we are driving at is that transportation culture in Ghana has yet to reach a stage, or level, requiring the construction of an 8-kilometer (or 5-mile) bridge whose effective and regular maintenance cannot be guaranteed. In the wake of the Minnesota bridge collapse – I believe the bridge was called the I-9W – yours truly wondered aloud about the last time that any of the major Ghanaian bridges had undergone their critical, periodic repairs, if, indeed, there were any such thing in place at the MOT.

My fear regarding the proposed Oti River bridge has to do with emergency response measures. In other words, should there occur a similar tragic accident as occurred in Minnesota, exactly how fast, or soon, could rescue parties get to the scene, professional rescue parties, that is?

Needless to say, it is not that anybody loathes the pontine linkage between the northern and southern sectors of the country. God knows such a bridge, theoretically speaking, is long overdue. But practically speaking, are we prepared to sustain, or cover, the massive cultural capital that maintaining such an impressive landmark requires?

Presently, we learn that a lone ferry operated by the Volta Lake Transport Company, links the Dambai and Borae communities, presumably by the same riverine course over which the construction of a giant bridge is being considered. And so why not add two or more ferries to this route, since ferry management seems quite pedestrian, and thus safer, for our level and skill in transportation management?

In any case, as I read the brief GNA report, captioned “Longest Bridge in Ghana yet to be Constructed” (Ghanaweb.com 2/6/08), I chuckled to myself and wondered if the most appropriate name for such a bridge, if it ever becomes necessary to build the same, ought not to be “Gye Nyame” (Except God).

Not very long ago, when the defunct Ghana Airways Corporation ran those hulking 30-year-old airplanes, and I had the uneasy fortune, twice, to take a roundtrip in them, I nicknamed these aged mechanical contraptions “Onyame Ne 'Nipa Anim” (Between God and Humankind).

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. E-mail: [email protected].