Disasters in Ghana are acts of God

Brong Ahafo Region while about 21 others sustained various degrees of injuries during an excursion at the waterfalls. Most of the students who lost their lives were from the Wenchi Methodist SHS and the University for Energy and Natural Resources in Sunyani.

An investigation sanctioned into the incident, according to the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Mrs Catherine Afeku, concluded that ‘the incident was an act of God!’

Media accounts on the accident indicate that it occurred at about 4.30 p.m. on the said date, when a huge tree ran off the top of the waterfall, descending on the dozens of revellers who were swimming beneath.

Disasters

On June 3, 2015, a fire explosion at the Goil fuel station opposite Vienna City at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra led to the death of about 200 people with more than 300 others sustaining various degrees of injuries.

An investigation was launched into the cause of the fire. The investigations in part concluded that a “cigarette or ‘wee’ smoker” threw the fag of the cigarette he was smoking into the floods that had a considerable mix of fuel, hence starting the deadly fire.

On February 17, 2016, a Metro Mass Transit bus collided with a cargo truck on the Kintampo –Tamale highway, killing over 63 people and injuring about 25 others, some of them life-threatening.

Preliminary information by the Police suggested that the Metro Mass Bus which was involved in the accident was overloaded and wrongfully overtook a car in a curve.

According to the Police, the actual number of passengers permitted for the bus was 63, however, the number of people involved in the accident was running into 80.

Myjoyonline’s report on the accident as of February 2, 2016 quoted the then Brong Ahafo Regional Police Commander, DCOP Maxwell Atingani, of having quoted an injured passenger on the Metro Mass bus to have said that the vehicle developed a faulty brake when it got to Techiman, about 62km from the crash site.

The said passenger is reported to have told the police that the driver of the bus stopped to fix the problem, but the mechanic who came to work on the vehicle failed to solve the problem.

The bus driver, determined to reach his destination, continued the journey with the faulty brakes and on reaching a sharp curve at Kintampo, the brakes failed and rammed into the cargo truck.

On Saturday, October 9, 2017, a gas explosion occurred at Atomic Junction in Accra, killing about eight people with over 132 others sustaining injuries of varied degrees. Although an official report is yet to come out, it has been concluded in the court of public opinion that the fire was started by a khebab seller, popularly called “Chichinga” operators.

Who to blame

The above incidents represent the many avoidable accidents that have occurred in the country, which could have been prevented.

The sad thing is that instead of us taking responsibility for our very actions that contribute to and cause these avoidable accidents, we are smart enough to apportion our irresponsible acts on someone else – mostly God.

God has become the dump site in Ghana where we dump all our irresponsible acts and its repercussions on Him. I don’t know whether to describe it as laziness on our part or lack of reasoning, to continue to suffer the same problems over and over again in our country without finding lasting solutions to such problems.

Every year, we see floods of varied kinds. People have died and more are likely to die if we do not take responsibility of our irresponsible acts and its associated problems.

We have become so spiritual to the extent that we are losing our sense of reasoning, forgetting that the God we claim to worship and serve admonishes us to seek wisdom and knowledge and apply them in our daily lives for our own good!

There has not been any disaster in Ghana without ‘we’ ascribing the God-factor interpretation as to the cause without logically identifying our commissions and omissions, both individually and collectively in it. God is not responsible for our disasters. We are responsible for every disaster that occurs in our country, Ghana.

Wisdom, God and Action

Being religious does not mean lose your sense of reasoning. For instance, the Bible says in Proverbs 18:15 that “An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge”.

Additionally, in Proverbs 2:6 we are told that “For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding”.

Ecclesiastes 7:12 even makes it clearer that “For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it”.

I don’t want to sound like a theologian to reprimand Ghanaians of having neglected the import of the wisdom in Hosea 4:6 that says that “for lack of knowledge, my people perish”. We can’t continue to perish because we don’t have knowledge. We have knowledge but our problem has been how to give effect to our knowledge.

The above scriptures are just a few of the verses in the Bible that talk about knowledge and wisdom and admonishes people to acquire them.

I was amazed to see dozens of people gathered at the Atomic Junction accident scene less than a day after the incident. People were there in their numbers taking photographs of the remnants of the accident and even making it difficult for firefighters and security officers to have their way through.

These people did not only ignore the danger they were putting themselves into but were equally becoming obstacles to the firefighters to bring finality to the firefighting process. If any more gas had exploded at the scene, we would still be counting our loss as a country. As usual, God would have been blamed for the cause. Let us learn.

Safety issues

Safety issues are disregarded with impunity in the land. We only think of safety after disasters have struck our nation.

I recall that a number of fuel stations that had been sited at wrong places were closed down soon after the June 3 disaster. The move was to avert reoccurrence of such an accident. But the sad news is that shortly after the mourning of the disaster had died down in our memory, all the closed down fuel stations sprang up to operate and are operating as we speak.

Government officials spent taxpayers’ monies in touring and closing down these fuel stations, but the purpose for which the taxpayers’ monies were used was not realised. We are back to basics. We cannot build a nation like this. We cannot develop like this. We must not think of safety only after accidents. We ought to plan ahead to prevent disasters and accidents.

I strongly believe that Ghana needs to introduce safety and environmental education in our educational curriculum to adequately prepare our young ones to shape their mindset towards safety measures.