The Ordeal to Kumasi and Back

E. Ablorh-Odjidja

May 02, 2022


I have just returned to Accra on a trip to Kumasi and am bitterly disappointed by the experience. 

To suggest that traveling between these two major cities demands the first-class roadway to save time and ease traveling hazards and pains should be a no-brainer.

On this trip to Kumasi, on a Friday, April 29, 2022, weekend, the experience was traumatic.  It took seven and half hours to complete what would have been approximately a four hours journey of some 165 miles.

Comparatively, it would take about four hours, barring some road accident, to complete a journey of some 225 miles from Washington, DC to New York City.  So, again, my expectation of the drive time to Kumasi can't be considered outlandish.

Except, there were problems on the road: all, as reasons, ranging from the political will, civil engineering proclivities, and the cultural mish-mass of the people who use the road.

And among these reasons, the obvious one was culture.

There was the regular traffic of commercial traffic along with the social set heading to Kumasi this Friday to do what we do best in Ghana – celebrate funerals.  And I was part of this set. 

As for the rest of my fellow travelers, I was informed that they were veterans of funerals past; many of whom would eagerly show up for the next one, on this same road, and the clutter on the passageway to Kumasi would continue. 

We, the travelers, we’re all heading presumably to the same city to help celebrate the passing of some important personage in our lives.

The next obvious reason for the clutter was the roadway itself.  It spoke of the disjointed policies of past administrations’ on-road management in Ghana.

There have been attempts since independence to have a first-class roadway built between our major cities.  There was the idea of the “Golden Triangle” that was to link Accra, Takoradi, Kumasi, and points in the North and back under Nkrumah.

The project was started.  The Accra/Tema Motorway was completed.  But the continuation effort, conveniently dubbed as “white elephant,” was aborted soon after the 1966 coup.

The next most spectacular attempt came under President Kufuor.  The Accra/Tema Motorway continued as the Bush Highway.  And sections of well-built roadways continued deep into several regions. 

The road to Kumasi was among the beneficiaries of the built-up under Kufuor.  Dual thoroughfares went for miles in either direction. But in between the new were some parts of the old sections, of single lanes running side by side in opposite directions, which were left uncompleted. 

One would have thought that the Kufuor’s renewal project of, at least, the Kumasi roadway would have been completed by now.  But it has not.

Comparing the hope that was a decade-plus ago with what is available for road transportation to Kumasi now is enough to fill one with disbelief and curiosity. Why still stretches of slow-moving traffic on the drive to Kumasi? 

This problem has become more complex with today’s demands – the need to have Burkina Faso, an in-land country, use our harbor at Tema.

So, on this Friday goods from the harbor were on their way to the North on heavy trucks, the shipping container, and the long haulage types all loaded to the brim.

 Some of these trucks had to stop for rest on the sides of sections of the new roadway, further clogging and turning the dual into a single thoroughfare.

Understandably, the drivers had no officially designated place on the journey for rest. 

There hadn’t for decades been a government policy that could have created open fields of off-road parking spaces or rest stops in between journeys for these trucks.

As I saw these trucks, hugging and squeezing the narrow roadway, it became obvious to me that effective road building and management policies over the years have been lax in this country.

Strangely, the recent talk in town has been about tourism buildup for the country.  But it seemed the most important tourism corridor, Accra to Kumasi, has been forgotten.

Then you wonder about the very expensive interchanges that have been built in the inner cities of Accra and Kumasi.  How that could have improved transportation between the two cities, or even unclog the inner-city streets should be a puzzle.

In these two cities, municipal mass transportation systems, inner-city light rail transportation tracks, and not to mention, inter-city railway systems could have helped but they were missing.

The bypasses that had been created at strategic points for access to the modernized sections of the roadway were also in trouble; their usefulness was already crippled by the practices of local vendors.

At the entrance of the bypass at Nkawkaw, hawkers, vendors, and stationary and oversized vehicles had made access to these bypasses almost impossible.  One could only go past these problem areas at a crawl.

But, when the roadway opens up, you will find highly specialized undisciplined drivers at their best.  This lot had no concern for the rules of the roadway, nor the lives in their vehicles, except to drive with the most reckless will, in a Kamikaze manner.

They did overtake other vehicles at unsafe places - uphill and dangerous curves being some of the few.  These were the drivers that cause carnage on the road.

But the chief cause of the carnage on Ghanaian roads should be the vehicles themselves. 

Many of these would qualify as vehicular defect cases.  However, the department for roadworthiness and the police had overlooked or allowed them, for one reason or another, to use the roadways.

A case in point were trucks that had come to an abrupt stop on slopes; obviously, the engines were vastly underpowered to pull effectively the load at the back at all gradients.

These vehicles, already so heavy, should have been considered unfit for the fragile road but there they were on it and now at rest and hazards to unsuspecting drivers. 

By the way, the Accra/Kumasi sector had already been listed as one of the bad roadways in Ghana. As said, I arrived safely on it but was highly stressed seven and half hours later.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, May 14, 2022.

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