Nii Odartei Mills believes a new capital will ensure a better planned modern city
Consulting Engineer and City Planner, Ing. Professor Nii Odartei Mills, has urged government to get a new capital for Ghana due to the poor state of the country’s current capital, Accra.
According to him, the congestion, poor planning and indiscipline makes it prudent to have another capital built from scratch. He was of the view that such a move will ensure a better planned modern city befitting a country like Ghana.
He cited the example of Abuja in Nigeria built in the 1980s which has a good plan which caters for important development issues.
“Let us have a capital that we can be proud of and be able to call it our own. I mean, the rational way of doing that is to move to a place, a quiet virgin where we can actually have a lot of land. I am not going to name any particular place but where we as Ghanaians can be proud,” he told Moro Awudu on Class FM’s Executive Breakfast Show on Wednesday, January 10.
Prof Mills also suggested scattering the location of the various ministries as the current ministries enclave. He said the current system where most of the important governmental agencies converge at one location is not the best.
“We have the ministries all crowded at a particular place. I mean, that is not good for anybody. That was done during the colonial era. Can we apply a little common sense to spread the ministries all over the country? Once you spread it the traffic to Accra will cease,” he explained.
He further indicated that making Accra the cleanest and safest city does not involve only clearing street hawkers but also motor cyclists.
Prof Mills’ comment comes on the heels of a recent decongestion exercise being undertaken by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) at the Central Business District of Accra and Kwame Nkrumah Circle as part of efforts to keep the city clean.
He said: “Let’s not concentrate only on clearing the hawkers off the streets or roadsides. What about the motor cyclists? They are so stupid they kill themselves, they kill other people, and they’ve hit my car more than six times. If you are not able to clear Accra of these motor cyclists, then we are doing more harm to ourselves than even removing the hawkers.”
He added: “If you say you are going to make Accra the cleanest city which I think is achievable, but if we don’t put in the necessary tools and inputs that we need to be able to complete the job, then, it will become an event.”
