It has become so disheartening to read the news these days. Everything that comes out as news - directly or indirectly, throws the painful reality of the poor state of our nation, right smack into our already depressed faces. ... read full comment
It has become so disheartening to read the news these days. Everything that comes out as news - directly or indirectly, throws the painful reality of the poor state of our nation, right smack into our already depressed faces.
One does not need to be an engineer, an architect or any kind of builder to see that it is not only the floodlights at the Ohene Djan Sports Stadium of Accra that need to be fixed. The entire place is slowly and steadily degenerating into a disaster prone edifice and if we had any serious thinking public officials in this country, a ban would have already been placed on the continuous use of that stadium for any activity of any kind until a proper rehabilitation of the place has been done.
I am disappointed in the above piece of news in which some obscure media organization is making some impetuous claims about “accepting the challenge” to fix the floodlights at the Ohene Djan stadium.
To begin with, it is not the lights (bulbs) per se that need to be fixed, it is the entire lighting system – more especially, the pylons (structures) upon which the lights are fixed. It must be recalled that even when there were lights affixed to those pylons, there had been problems with the lighting system when these had been put on. The ludicrous idea of removing lights from the Baba Yara Stadium in Kumasi with the intent of fixing them on the pylons in the Ohene Djan Sports stadium in Accra, is a villagers way of seeing the problem and fixing it.
I would further suggest that even if the current govt would wish to maintain the Ohene Djan Stadium as it is, any rehabilitation works on any part of it should as of necessity be assigned to experts who know their job. Leaving highly technical repair works of the kind which is evident at the Ohene Djan stadium to a media company, only suggests to me that there is an NDC-type of scam in the offing.
A few years ago when the Kufuor govt and a frivolously incompetent National Organizing Committee in tow, recklessly undertook to ‘renovate’ the Ohene Djan stadium to host the Africa Cup tournament, I wrote an article to the national dailies warning that it would amount to a waste of money to pump all those resources into renovating an awkwardly located, user-inconvenient and unprofitable venue. I had suggested that stretching an extra mile to invest in a completely new user-friendly, purpose-built and viable structure in a more convenient part of the city would have more lasting benefits and greater potential for sports development in Ghana.
Of course the significance of the issues I had raised got lost in the mass hysteria of hosting the Africa Cup and the peanuts and trifles that were to be gained by the local media and sports administrators alike and therefore, not surprisingly, the article must have probably ended up in some journalists waste bin out of disgust. Needless to say, the outstanding substance of the concerns I raised, will continue to haunt us until the day when we shall be privileged and blessed with thinking politicians who shall see the need to do what should be done with the Ohene-Djan Sports stadium.
It has become so disheartening to read the news these days. Everything that comes out as news - directly or indirectly, throws the painful reality of the poor state of our nation, right smack into our already depressed faces. ...
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