Controversy Unlimited: Watering Opposition Of Water

Between September 22, 1980 and August 18, 1988, the Baathist Republic of Iraq and the Islamic Republic of Iran engaged in a fierce war that had devastating consequences not only on the peoples of those countries but on international business, peace and security as well. The war was induced by the decision in 1980 of the late President Saddam Hussein to unilaterally abrogate a bilateral agreement he had initialed with Iran in 1975 that made for the Shatt al Arab, a water way through which the port of Basra could be reached for shipping purposes and more importantly, provide fresh and treated pipe-borne water to the whole of southern Iraq and the Emirate of Kuwait. Iran, which was subsequently vindicated by international law (the 1975 agreement could not be unilaterally abrogated by any one party) did not take kindly to the uninvited ‘aggression’ and responded appropriately to protect its ‘interests’, taken here to mean the curtailment of rights and privileges it enjoyed under the Shatt al Arab regime. It may also have been to protect the interests of the marsh Arabs of southern Iraq who in practice and reality are Shias and therefore trace their spiritual background to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Needless to say, the war ended in a stalemate after a million people had lost their lives, financial losses of $228 billion in direct expenditures and $400 billion in damage to oil and urban facilities all because of - you guessed right, water!

Now did I read right that the Ghana Water Company is considering the idea of selling water to the Republic of Togo as part of measures to improve the water supply in the Land of Our Death? My goodness! Are we serious at all in this country called Ghana? Who at all woke up from a nightmare, in which he saw a combination of sea urchins, water hyacinth and crystal eyed green snakes all belching out gallons of water so that Togo looked like a preferred destination? Have we suddenly satisfied the people of Ghana with pipe-borne water enough to rid this nation of the terrible and unwanted buruli ulcer? When was the last time the increasingly degenerate alternative of “bore holes” adequately and permanently solved the water problems in towns, communities and districts within Ghana? So now, we have suddenly found that Ghana indeed abounds in water resources, so much so that it is trite, proper and feasible to sell water to our brotherly Eyadema the Gnassingbe of Lomé fame? Are we really serious?

This is not a xenophobic attack on our neighbours, neither is it a clarion call to arms in the vein of “we no go sit down make them cheat us everyday”. It is a direct attack on those who have suddenly woken up from a trancelike stupor to the reality that Ghana can add water to the power it sends eastward, ostensibly because our eastern neighbour is in a tight corner, hence making it feasible for us to eke, nay extract an arm and a leg from them in their moment of need. Welcome to the world of economic partnership a la ECOWAS. With thoughts like these, how can ECOWAS equal or indeed rival the European Union? But that’s on the foreign relations front. The hard core reality that confronts the people of Ghana is not what the suddenly “benevolent democracy” of Accra finds as another fund-raising effort to fleece the “oligarchic democracy” of Lomé; it is the fact that the people Adenta, La, Teshie-Nungua, Macarthy Hill or Ashongman and its contiguous zones have not experienced any treated water being piped through their PVC pipes till date. Now how do you tell those hard working Ghanaians who reside, live, squat and pursue their socio-economic interests in the aforementioned places that they should continue to “bear with the Ghana Water Company while their problems are addressed” and throw sparrow sputum in their faces by indicating readiness to pipe pipe-borne water to Lomé? Only in Ghana, I tell you, only in Accra Ghana is such absolute madness a laughing matter. Perhaps, our fama Nyame syndrome is at play, only that this time around, water is life and as surely as the sun sets in west, the Ghana Water Company might be signing its own death warrant with this piece of ill-thought out and ill-conceived madness. You see, when the good people of this country who have been denied the free flow of water decide to march into the offices of the Ghana Water Company without notification as the Public Order Act stipulates, not even the police would protect life and property; indeed IGP Patrick Tawiah Quaye’s men are likely to turn a blind eye, after all, they are also at the receiving end of the lack of pipe-borne water flowing through their overpopulated and decrepit pipes that were laid when the Colonial Authorities transported the first police personnel from Northern Nigeria into the Gold Coast. At that stage, they would be completely oblivious of the Public Order Act and are likely to be influenced by memories of the increasing bills that are thrust into their saddened and despairing faces at the end of each month. There are no tears for the Ghana Water Company and their monumental inefficiencies. Let me explain from personal experience.

I happen to live at Baatsona, the very place that those on the lunatic fringe cringe that I acquired by dint of work in a certain campaign. You see, when you don’t exorcise the ghosts of J.B. Danquah’s Ghana and its attendant 50th birthday celebration and join forces with lightweights to “skin pain” a person like me, I would sit at the Coffee Shop and share bouts of unsolicited laughter with the guys, for we have no questions to answer to any parliamentary committee or presidential commission; that is the kind of money that is needed for the sorrowful people of Baatsona who live in Waldorf Astoria type houses and drive European versions of Chrysler 300Cs to enjoy Ghana Water Company produced pipe-borne water. My dear reader, the truth is that in my part of Baatsona, water does not flow. I have lived in my crib since April 2007. Not a single drop of water has ever cascaded down the PVC pipes that form the complex network of arteries in my Waldorf Astoria. As a result, I am very familiar with the water tanker drivers including those who would complain that the nature of the road to my famous Waldorf Astoria which is making people green with envious jealousy makes it right for them to charge me more for the service; then there are those who simply love to supply 2000 gallons in lieu of 2500 when you are not smart enough to monitor the discharge of water; some crafty ones even come at dawn when your eyes are heavy with inadequate sleep and God help you if you cannot read through their schemes.

The import of this is to tell the Ghana Water Company that I have been paying an average of thirty-five pesewas (0.35p) every month as my water bill. Now your guess is as good as mine for although I religiously pay this money (I’m contemplating going to court to test the law on this one), I have come to realize that the sum is the component earmarked for rural development or some such weird charge levied to improve the lot of our relatively deprived rural folk. Now how come I am charged for a service I do not enjoy to improve the life of somebody who may not even know of a thing called pipe-borne water? Is this not plain thievery? And then you turn round to inform my liberated mind that you intend sending water to where? I can assure the proponents of such a bankrupt piece of cow zuzu that I shall readily marshal the “ground troops” of Teshie and Nungua to “positively defy” any move in that Eastward direction until and unless our interests have been taken cognizance of and our needs addressed. It is as simple as that. I know that my cousins in Anehor would understand, after all, we asked them to come back after the great exile but how can they return home when the allure of rocketed water to their present abodes is being preached by none other than the monopolistic Ghana Water Company? By the way where is the Coalition Against the Privatisation of Water? Or are they like some “Committee” loud only when the New Patriotic Party is in power? Maybe they are still scheming to make Kweku Sakyi-Addo so very unemployed huh? Hello Aqua-Vittens Rand? Is anybody in the office?

There is some merit in cross-border water resource sharing and profiteering. International protocols sometimes underpin such arrangements for the benefit of those who enjoy the resources of water bodies such as rivers and great lakes. The closest examples of such mutually beneficial arrangements are the Nile River and its benefits that can be seen in Sudan, Egypt and right down to sources as far from Egypt as Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. These countries have bilateral agreements that ensure that irrespective of which malcontent in uniform disrupts their stability and tranquility, there is no disruption of water supply to the members of the pacts. The catch here is that there is a high level of benefit for each country’s domestic consumption such that they are not perturbed if treated water from the numerous tributaries that comprise the Nile are sent to far flung countries other than their source countries. When juxtaposed against the backdrop of what the Ghana Water Company intends doing, fears of what occurred between Iran and Iraq as recounted above over the Shatt-Al-Arab that induced the beginning of military hostilities between the two neighbouring states immediately come to mind: the Shatt al Arab supplied water to southern Iraq and Kuwait and doubles as an outlet to the ocean to and from the port of Basra; fears of what water has imposed on the good people of Syria and Israel as a result of the (un)fair use of that which takes its source from the Golan Heights: Israel fully annexed control of this vital source of water in 1981 after seizing same in the war of 1967; fears of the threat value of the Government of Turkey cutting the flow of water to Syria and adjoining regions during their occasional spats: Turkey signed an agreement with Syria in 1987 to supply it with a flow of water at 500 meters a second which is violated when relations deteriorate between these two neighbours. All these point out that the export of water, if not carefully thought out, can lead to serious disputes, some (as noted above) enough to degenerate into military aggression.

I am not by any means insinuating that the export of water to Togo by the Republic of Ghana would necessarily lead to war; on the contrary, I am inverting the logic, that the inability to satisfy the Ghanaian consumer is a recipe for disaster for what is the guarantee that those who would not benefit from the water resources of Ghana would sit pliantly by and watch the very thing being denied them traveling in long pipes to our neighbours? How do we guarantee that they would not sabotage the free-flow of water “legitimately” seeing that the very act of sabotage may be the only means of averting water borne diseases simply because they are not recipients of treated water? Have we found a way of ensuring that the Volta River, which is likely to become the source of any such export does not become the very source of conflict between Ghana and all the states that have anything to do with the Volta, both upstream and downstream? It is the likelihood of morally sound sabotage (although criminal to all intent and purposes) that may induce the reality of retaliation or reprisal, which if not well managed, could escalate into an avoidable inferno. The Republic of Turkey for example has managed to pipe water to its over 70 million citizens so that nobody frowns if the excess is sent to Syria; have we satisfied the people of Baatsona, Burma Camp, Tesano, La Wireless and Kojo Sardine, Adenta, Teshie-Nungua, Madina, Asongman and Musuko to make it feasible and morally justifiable to pipe water to Togo? Somebody talk to me for I dare say, we are deluding ourselves if we think that for a few dollars more, we can sacrifice the aspirations and expectations of the good people of Ghana. Perhaps, it is the overlooking of these realities that would water the opposition to water resource exportation as espoused by the Ghana Water Company. Jehovah Tsidkenu protect us from water world wars now and always!