The water came at 3 a.m. It took the fence first, then the kitchen, then 12-year-old Ama Serwaa.
By sunrise in Kasoa, her mother was still screaming her name into the brown current that used to be a street.
We will bury Ama next week. We will donate mattresses to her family. NADMO will count the dead. And then, like clockwork, we will forget.
Until next June.
The Ghanaian Flood Cycle
Every rainy season in Ghana follows the same script.
Act 1: The Warning. GMet says rainfall will be heavy. Experts warn that drains are choked. Assemblies promise to dredge.
Act 2: The Disaster. Odaw overflows in Accra. Weija breaks its banks. Kaneshie becomes a river. In Kumasi, the Aboabo floods. In Tamale, gutters disappear. At least 59 died in Abidjan this week. In 2023, Ghana lost 12 people in Greater Accra alone.
Act 3: The Amnesia. Politicians tour in wellington boots. Relief items are shared on camera. A committee is formed. The report gathers dust.
Then we rebuild on the same waterway.
Why? Because Nobody Pays
Go to Tse Addo. Go to Weija. Go to Aboabo in Kumasi. You will see three-storey buildings sitting inside drainage channels. You will see churches built on storm drains. You will see MMDAs collect permit fees for those same structures.
Everyone knows they are illegal. The Land Use and Spatial Planning Act, 2016, Act 925, bans building in waterways. Section 121 of that Act makes it an offence for a public officer to willfully fail to enforce the law. The penalty is a fine or jail.
Yet when was the last time a DCE was prosecuted for the deaths caused by flooding? When was the last time an Assembly was sued into bankruptcy by families who lost relatives because a permit was issued for a house in a river?
Never.
So the buildings stay. The engineers stay. The DCEs get transferred. And we come back next June, counting bodies.
The Economics of Impunity
Ask any Works Engineer at an Assembly why the structure wasn’t demolished. The answer is the same: “Orders from above.” “Political pressure.” “The owner is powerful.”
Demolition is electoral poison. No MP wants to be filmed tearing down a constituent’s house in an election year. No DCE wants to anger the party chairman who owns the filling station on the drain.
So we do the Ghanaian thing. We manage. We desilt for the cameras. We blame climate change. We blame residents for dumping refuse. We never blame the Assembly that approved the building plan for a warehouse inside the Lafa River.
But climate change does not issue building permits. Assemblies do.
What Real Accountability Looks Like
Until an Assembly is bankrupted by negligence damages, or a DCE is jailed under Section 121 of Act 925 for failing to enforce the law, the buildings will stay on the waterways. And we will be back here next June, counting bodies.
That is the hard truth.
We jail a goat thief in 48 hours. But we cannot jail the man who signed the permit that killed 8 people in a flood. We can fine a trotro driver GHS 600 for a broken taillight. But we cannot fine an Assembly GHS 10 million for allowing an estate to block the Sakumo lagoon.
Other countries have changed this. In 2015, the Mayor of Mocoa, Colombia, was prosecuted after 300 people died in landslides linked to illegal construction. In Nigeria, Lagos State now publishes names of officials who approve illegal structures.
Ghana has the laws. Act 925 is clear. The issue is courage.
The Way Out
1. Name and shame: EPA, Land Use Authority, and Works Departments must publish every permit issued in a waterway, with the name of the officer who signed it.
2. Civil suits: Families of flood victims should sue Assemblies for negligence. One GHS 50 million judgment will make every DCE check the map before signing.
3. Prosecute: The Attorney General must test Section 121. Send one DCE to Nsawam for criminal negligence. The rest will learn.
4. Protect whistleblowers: The planner who refuses to sign an illegal permit today will be victimized tomorrow. Give them legal cover.
Ama Deserves More Than a Press Conference
We love to say “Never Again” after disasters. Circle. Appiatse. June 3. But “Never Again” without consequence is just a slogan.
The water will come again. The only question is whether we will finally punish the hands that built the dams of concrete in its path.
If we don’t, buy your life jackets early. Because next June, we will meet here. Counting bodies.
Alexander Afriyie, Supervising Editor, Ghanacrimereport.com and Ghanatalk.com