At War With Accra’s Billboards!

Were I to carry out my weak resolve to write an article a week, the Accra Metropolitan Authority (AMA), through its actions and inactions would undeservedly merit my justifiably angry attention. It simply appears that AMA cannot manage Accra into the future.

Before I speak about billboards let me briefly speak for my neighbourhood. I live at Martey-Tsuru: re-christened East Airport by property developers and home owners eager to ensure that their home prices surge. For four (4) weeks we have not had a drop of water running through some of the taps in my neighbourhood, mine included! Countless checks with AVRL have yielded nothing and we have not been assigned reasons for the closure. Electricity supply seems to have stabilised but the voltage/wattage is so low a microwave cannot work! On 19/2/08, Ledzokuku Metropolitan Municipal Assembly (LEKMA) inscribed “Remove before 26/2/08” on the kiosks and other illegal structures that dot our neighbourhood. The kiosks have multiplied by the dozen. We are at the mercy of faceless neighbours, and LEKMA which says with pride that ours is the “flagship” neighbourhood within their jurisdiction is doing nothing about the situation. At the T-Junction that leads into our estate from Spintex Rd., a new home builder, a lawyer, has torn down part of his fence wall which was set on the prescribed limits of fence wall and street and built a house and gate post which encroach some 10ft into the road at a T-Junction! LEKMA knows about this. “Tell him to come and see me in my office” LEKMA’s Works Engineer, a chap called Nketia insists. Do I need to go there? This is the most brazen, blatant and senseless encroachment of building on a road that I’ve seen and yet LEKMA cannot confront it. Even un-discerning residents are astounded at the degree of impunity, perpetuated by a “learned” person and the fact that he got ECG to move their teak pole to make way for his unlawful structure. Of Martey-Tsuru, more soon. To the matter of bill and sign boards must I devote my wrath. Is AMA in a time warp with the “this is how we’ve been doing it” mentality? What are the prescribed heights, width, distance from roads, foundation depth and other engineering requirements and finishes that bill and signboards must conform to in Accra? I’ve skirted this issue on occasion in previous articles. Today it is my main meal. Allow me to use examples to illustrate the point. Spintex Rd. users will appreciate them.

At the First Catering Junction, the top of East Airport School’s sign is the same height and only about 6 inches from the power cables that supply power to our neighbourhood. Were a gale to keel the sign over, the consequences will be dire. All along the road, 4-5 storey high billboards, built to no laid-down standards jostle with streetlight poles, overhead electricity and telephone lines for space. At the aforementioned junction is the colossus which features Richoco and Tom-Tom either side. Its 6ft. concrete base supports an 8ft. mast atop of which is a 30ft high billboard. At 45 ft high, it is visible for miles. How these goliaths ensure increased sales of products advertised thereon, I am yet to fathom. Across the road from Action Church are two of the biggest. One of them, owned by DPP is host to Vlisco fabric and Geisha soap adverts. Towering above the street lights by about 30ft., it is about 80ft tall. Close to it is another dinosaur, home to a Nokia phone and MTN’s ubiquitous, tired 2010 advert. But, hands down winner in the “most offensive” category must be the one at the bus-stop behind the Accra Mall facing Spintex Rd. which advertises Samsung’s Tv’s. Its lower arm encroaches 3ft into the pedestrian waiting area of the bus stop and is barely 5’8” high! You should see pedestrians ducking it. I won’t discuss the danger it poses to pedestrians and the fact that if you are silly enough to smash your face against those metal beams, this being Ghana, you have no remedy against either the billboard owners or the AMA. Who authorised its erection?

Whilst I’m at that bus-stop, may I humbly urge AMA to ensure that this bus-stop does not become a taxi-station and a parking lot for people who leave their cars and skip across to the Mall. This usually starts after 5.00p.m. Do not negotiate with them. The consequence of this illegal parking: The two-lane road has become a one-laner leading to increased and avoidable traffic. AMA, act now! Please put “No-Parking” signs and guards there at once. Don’t wait till this illegality becomes entrenched and you have to negotiate with them and help re-settle them with World Bank loans! Help re-settle them somewhere from which they can operate quietly and within the confines of our road traffic rules. But to reverse park into a bus-stop and wait for passengers, say “No Way”! During the rainy season several of these billboards come crashing down. They lie across the road and impede traffic for hours. Does the AAG ensure that its members comply with the minimum standards they must have set themselves? Do they sanction erring members? Who supervises why, when, how and where these billboards are placed? This is Accra, our capital. If we can’t insist on doing it right we cannot insist that the Suhum District Assembly for example, keeps any standards.

Can’t we realize that there are guidelines regarding height and width, positioning, quality of materials, lighting allowed etc. on sign and billboards depending on whether they are in city centres or on the shoulders of motorways etc. Is the contest about size rather than quality? It’s a bit like GBC’s silly “STILL the ONLY station with nationwide coverage” boast; a lowly aspiration since GBC is embarrassingly quite poor for content and quality, in our sea of new TV stations. A glorification of size over sense was never more manifest. Must we have 5 storey billboards in the middle of our pavements? On the road I’m embarrassed to call “ Osu Oxford St.”, not because I’m fighting any “neo-colonial, imperialist tag” but because our high-brow shopping street is filthy, smelly and unworthy of that name, these behemoths straddle the pavements. Pedestrians have to duck to avoid them. Oxford St. W1., London is home to 548 shops. It has the largest density of shops per square foot of any road in the world. Thousands of shoppers and tourists stroll along its pavements everyday. It is served by 4 underground train stations which disembowel hundreds of people onto the road every few minutes. It is the archetype of capitalist behaviour and endeavour, key to which is advertising. There are no billboards of the type we have so needlessly and foolishly embraced. The shops, banks, pubs, restaurants and hotels diplay their names on their buildings. Period! Were all these shops to erect billboards on Oxford St. W.1, what would happen? Chaos would ensue. Thankfully this is not the case. That this is not the case is not by luck but by careful planning, enforcement and review of rules. There is free flow of traffic on Oxford St. London’s sidewalks. On our Cantonments Road aka “Oxford St.”, the pavements are choked not only with billboards but also with goods of every description for sale. Eye Mobo!

On the High Street, the concrete base of GCB’s moderate height billboard juts 3ft unto the pavement. It obstructs pedestrians and should be removed. AMA’s offices are 200meters away.

But there is always something to smile about. Action Church’s blockbuster sign screams “War Cry” and features a lion squaring off with an unfazed Nick Duncan Williams, the Visioner. The other one which proclaims “2010 The Year of Divine Intervention” has a lightning strike, a gavel and a raunchy, rosy-cheeked Caucasian female priest as its main highlights. Very movie-like, but set on the manicured lawns in front of Action Chapel, they seem to my untrained, non-technical, once keen but now rapidly failing eyes, the right quality, height, width and distance from the road that our billboards must aspire to. Bigger does not necessarily mean better...

Johnny Blukoo-Allotey, Accra, Ghana.