The Accra flood and the branding of the unnecessary   E. Ablorh-Odjidja June 10, 2016   I am inclined to ask after the rains of yesterday, June 09, 2016, this simple question: Is it more laudable to brand city buses with loud images of our presidents or better to unclog our city drains on the quiet?   If you were caught in the resulting floods after the rains, and as a reminder of past floods, you should have had your answer ready by now.   The rains at Accra metro area last Thursday, like it has for centuries, were heavy as usual for this time of the year.  Except, we are caught unprepared as usual for the resulting flooding that followed.   Just last year, we had a combination of a Biblical-sized flood and a conflagration that destroyed homes, killed and maimed dozens of people.   Despite the losses, I am yet to learn if any lesson was learned.   I was driving on the Bush Highway when the rains started.  And came to a stop inside a very long traffic jam at a section between the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange and the North Dzowulu lights.   The rains had caused the traffic to stop. Minutes of standing ater, I saw the water rising, gushing onto the street from all sides of the road.   Next to where my car was standing, on the right side of the road, was a Shell petroleum station. The sight of the station quickly reminded me of the fire that started during a similar flood last year.   Stuck in my car, nowhere to escape to, with the flood raging around me, I thought, the entire environment was a perfect setting for a repeat of last year’s flood and fire disaster.   With a petroleum station nearby, all it would take was for one stupid person to drop a smoldering cigarette butt into a petroleum mix in the floodwaters around and the disaster, as happened last year, would be repeated.   Yet there I was, caught in the traffic jam and waiting for something to happen.   About this time, I started thinking of death and disasters of the unnecessary kind and how our feckless government and city administrators contribute to them; concerning how we respond to the annual floods.   This should not be happening in Ghana.  But of course, it does constantly.   There was a city bus beside my car, also stuck in the flood as I was, branded with portraits of our past presidents. And I wondered what kind of branding would come up for Ghana when it came to the handling of the floods we suffer year after year.   I was also wondering how such a modern roadway, the Bush Highway, built with American money and Chinese technology, got flooded this bad within a few minutes of rainfall.   And the stretch of the highway I was on was not part of the noted areas prone to past floods.  Nkrumah Circle, Odaw Naa, Aborseokai Junction, and other places were all old parts of Accra.  The Bush Highway was just built.   Should the Americans hear about this flood, which they would, they would certainly not be amused.  As for the Chinese, I wouldn’t know.  But at least, they got their money.   Long before the rains, gutters, waterways, and lagoons get filled with debris, filth, and silt.  No wonder when it rains the runoffs from nearby arrears could go nowhere.  Any civil engineer worth his salt would tell you that a good clean-up before the rains would do half the job to stop the flooding.   As modern as the Bush Highway was, it ought to have proper drainage built in to withstand this type of flood. And proper drainage I believe it has.   There could only be one explanation left for the flood this time and probably for all the other floods.    Egress for drainage had already been compromised by the filth and silt long before the rains struck. This blockage had everything to do with the Ghanaian public.    And the problem goes directly to sanitation and environmental matters and how these are handled by the public.    We know there are illiterates among us.  It is easy, therefore, to see why filth overwhelms the drainage systems.  Add officialdom that does not understand or care that the first line of defense against this constant flooding is civic education.    But alas, there is very little done by the government to educate the public on the matter.    Little time is given on GTV for matters concerning the environment and civic education.  Rather, the channels are choked with poor content provisions - just when our drains are choking with debris and causing floods.   And in the floods, we see the branded buses on waterlogged streets, with their painted images of our presidents looking on from the sides of those buses.     The world saw the same flood and the buses too.  But don't be surprised or saddened by what they might think of us.   The rains will come again next year like they did last year. And the floods will follow, resulting in damages to properties and lives.     The torrential rains are for us what snow is to Upstate New York. The difference is Upstate New York prepares for the snow. We never prepare for the rains.   At the heart of our flooding problem is the Korle Lagoon.  A simple plan to combat the flooding would be to target the Korle Lagoon.  Dredge and desilt it, together with all the major drains and gutters that run into it.  It should be done years before the rains start.   There was a master plan by Kwame Nkrumah to turn the Korle Lagoon into a resort area.   The dredging of the lagoon was going on up until February 24, 1966, and the project was abruptly stopped, the beginning of what would soon become the usual “policy reversals” after changes in administrations.   There are civil engineers and planners alive today who knew about the Korle Lagoon project. We ought to revive and implement the plan.   While branding may be the latest trend in marketing in Ghana, I doubt whether those pushing the exercise have a good understanding of the mechanics and the psychology behind branding.   If they did, they would have known first that a brand can be flipped.  Imagine pictures of our presidents on broken-down buses on flooded streets and this could become the metaphor for a failed development of a freed colonial state.    Beauty and progress in Ghana do not depend on paintings of presidential faces on buses. Neither Nkrumah nor Kufuor needs his face seen on a bus that is stuck in the middle of a flood, going nowhere.   E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, June 10, 2016. Permission to publish: Please feel free to publish or reproduce, with credits, unedited. If posted at a website, email a copy of the web page to publisher@ghanadot.com. Or don't publish at all.