Yesterday’s edition of the Ghanaian Times painted a sorry and gory picture of our road safety situation during the last election period.
According to the state-owned paper, a staggering 44 people died, with 169 citizens getting injured, in 55 road accidents, with Greater Accra and the Ashanti regions recording the highest.
The information, based on official police releases signed by the Director of Operations of the Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD), Supt Sasu Mensah, also indicated that the accidents involved 86 commercial vehicles, 89 private ones and 69 motorbikes.
Causes of accidents, he disclosed, included drunk driving, overspeeding and recklessness on the part of drivers.
Community and electoral violence
As if that was not enough, the nation also witnessed incidents of electoral violence that marred the beauty of our hallowed electoral processes, with political party hotheads and some media personnel interestingly being cited among the perpetrators.
That’s aside of incidents in some parts of the northern regions, particularly the Kassena-Nankana Municipality where three people were reported dead and several others injured.
Gauged against the figures for last year, it is pertinent that we haven’t fared satisfactorily as a people and nation in relation to the figures regarding the accident, and also in terms of the magnitude of mayhem that also drew blood, with politics at the centre of our national threat and calamity
Culture of violence
While these acts of mayhem and incivility rage our political and social space, with threats to our collective peace, members of the National Democratic Congress, still wearing long faces over their defeat in the 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections, continue to incite youth everywhere in Ghana not only to protest the results of the elections, but also resist the authorities till their demands are met.
The NDC is perpetrating these clear violations of the diktats of law and order when they know that the decent and civil option is to petition the appropriate institution.
Unfortunately, when they are reminded by agencies like the National Peace Council, religious organisations and other segments of civil society to follow those lawful and credible paths, their response has been attacks on such agencies which they prefer to refer to as not credible, while they egg on their ignorant members to break the law with impunity.
One man’s inordinate appetite
It is very unfortunate that well-known NDC kingpins, including Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, goaded on by Johnson Asiedu Nketia and John Mahama, are endorsing that resistance philosophy and living it out in communities across the country.
Who doesn’t know that the plot is only aimed at igniting the greedy and personal appetite of a flagbearer who became an NDC member by the accident of his late father’s ‘sins’, and yet has developed wings that keep pushing him to put Ghana under his thumb, regardless of the threat that phony resistance plot poses to national security.
We admit that John Mahama has all the right to protest and protest lawfully. However, we believe that he as a former President and educated citizen knows that, like any ordinary citizen, he cannot ever be above the law.
Let him, therefore, not cross the line and burn his fingers!