Should we dissolve Akufo-Addo government over Adenta incident? - Prof. Gyampo asks

A political science lecturer is asking if the Akufo-Addo government should be dissolved over its appalling handling of fatalities on the Madina-Adenta highway that sparked spontaneous outrage Thursday by some residents when a student was knocked dead by a speeding vehicle.

The death of the first year student of the West African Senior High School who became the 195th person to be killed on the highway in 2018, and caused angry residents of Adenta to set tyres ablaze Thursday blocking the road in the process.

At least one person was hit with a stray bullet by the team of police personnel dispatched to quell the protest and clear the road for free flow of traffic.

Pedestrians are killed daily by speeding vehicles due to the absence of footbridges, nonfunctional traffic and street lights, something that triggered a campaign by residents to push government to fix the about six uncompleted footbridges that have been abandoned.

Government in response said it could only fix the footbridges in 2019.

But following Thursday’s mass action by the resident, the government announced it has engaged multiple contractors to start work on the abandoned footbridges within a week.

Commenting on the Thursday’s incident, Prof. Gyampo who is the Director of the Centre for European Studies at the University of Ghana though government heard the cries of the residents in the area regarding the carnage yet acted on it until the violent protest by the resident.

Making reference to the KNUST incident where the government moved in to dissolve the university’s governing council for its handling of an impasse that led to violent protest by the students, Prof. Ransford Gyampo wondered if it won’t be fair in like manner to dissolve the government.

“Government heard the complaints about the accidents on the Madina-Adenta Road & did nothing until the people demonstrated and there were casualties including loss of lives and injuries inflicted by the police on people who were drawing attention to their plight” he said.

“Can we call for the dissolution of the government?” he asked.

He then said “dissolving a Governing Council because of study demonstration only exposes a certain hidden agenda beyond the rather ignorant explanations being bandied around by some inexperienced appointees who have no clue about University administration and the rationale/spirit behind the nature and composition of Governing Councils of public universities”.

The University was expected to have been opened on November 8 for academic work to begin but the date could not be met due to a stalemate in the reconstitution of the governing council by the Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II.