The Accra Mayor and the dos Santos Award
E. Ablorh-Odjidja

June 09, 2015

Accra gets dirty and its mayor receives an award as the best run city in Africa. He receives it without a self-conscious blink; a pause that warns that the honor may be a joke, a pretense, a shock jock treatment meant rather to bring attention to the squalor in Accra.

The gag started when the Angolan president, José Eduardo dos Santos. decided to create the African Mayor Award, and had it named after himself.

Why? Perhaps, because Angola had a lot of petro-dollar to waste. And also, perhaps, dos Santos had been struck by some hubris and wanted attention for himself on the African scene.

Whatever dos Santos malady was, Mayor Vanderpuije joined him on the sick bed with the acceptance of the award!

Naturally, the mayor is a Ghanaian, full of the same hubris that drives many of our honorables. Thus, he is likely to miss the irony. That Accra, the city, is not managed well.

Accra is not listed anywhere in the top 20 most beautiful cities in Africa, yet it is well run?

What are the cities in contention? Has dos Santos ever been to Rabat, Morocco, Cape Town, South Africa, Dakar Senegal, Nairobi, Kenya; or his own capital Luanda, Angola?

As for our mayor, has he ever stepped in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, next door?

We should send the mayor to Abidjan on a 24-hr. junket; no hotel stays so he can use all 24 hrs. to explore this city day and night to see how things work in this city, even after three years of civil war.

The dos Santos Award couldn't be serious. It was a mockery. But what was the Mayor, Ouko Vanderpuije, response?

He accepted the award. Even more than that he had the city commission a huge billboard portrait of himself as the mayor of the best run city in Africa. And the billboard got erected in a flash on a major street in Accra - showing the smiling face of his honor; as if to tell us, the sops who don't know better, how well Accra is run.

Unfortunate for the Mayor, sops like us know the reality of Accra because we live here. Loving ourselves doesn't mean we should do so with lies.

Accra is definitely not well run. It lacks every bullet point on the chart for a well-run city, though it has a gorgeous natural topography, stunning, beautiful beaches, howbeit undeveloped. Certainly, Accra can be beautiful when well managed.

I remember a time in 1965 when the OAU summit conference was held in Accra. There used to be a department called "Parks and Gardens" at that time.  Is it still around?

This department was able to transform the city into a beautiful garden overnight, planting grown trees in places that were once open and bare. It was magical.

The most recent time Accra had a face lift was when the Ghana@50 was celebrated. The beauty of the city reappeared and one got a sense of the grandeur that could be bestowed on a city with just little help of dedication and care.

These seemingly ephemeral events of beauty happened on the watch of good leaders; even the colonial governors had their share in the contribution.

But since politics became a pimp shop, the running of the city of Accra has become lackluster. No award can hide this fact. It could only heighten the irony.

A nephew brought to my attention a piece written about the lament of a professional clown in the UK. This piece- the clown complaining about the current state of his profession - helped to clarify for me the irony in our current state of award.

“It’s a very funny business being a clown these days..... He can’t help feeling the profession is changing, and probably for the worst." The clown's lament was described in the piece.

Funny "business being a clown these days?" Try being the Mayor of Accra.

One should have laughed at the instance of the award, were it not for the seriousness of the state of our affairs in Accra. A clown's job is to make you laugh. It is a serious business for him. But now a Mayor is making us laugh, even when it is not his job!

Dos Santos chose Praia, in Cape Verde, Kinondoni, in Tanzania and Accra, in Ghana, for the awards; a total award money of $350,000 USD.

Of this sum, Accra took in the largest payout; exactly $200.000.

So, if Accra was the winner then this award is a sorry statement on the rest of the cities in competition for the award. They are true bummers; we are being told.

Somebody, preferably President dos Santos, deserves the red clown nose!

By the way, I am not aware whether part of the prize money for Accra went to pay for the commissioning of the advertising portrait of Mayor Oko Vanderpuije.

But remember this. And you may have heard: "God don't like ugly."

And, you may also have heard about what happened in Accra just last week. The best run city, the dos Santos award winner, got flooded because its drains, open gutters and lagoons were choked with silt, filth and garbage - all basic indicators of a badly run city.

For years, the stuffed gutters and drains have been the condition in Accra.  And nature, through the flood, exposed the filth in our beloved city, the calamity that the dos Santos Award missed.

This is the tragic blunder that happens when we keep pimping the political process; when party loyalty trumps merit and no politician is willing to tell slum creators and dwellers that they are fouling up the city and endangering lives in the process.

A beautiful area, the Airport Residential area, especially the street that runs in front of Nyaho Hospital, has been turned into a mall of container shops.

Inside the city proper, the James Town area, old Osu and others, is slowly being rendered no-go destinations.

Just across from the entrance of the new Palace Mall, at Flower Pot Junction on the Spintex Road, a junk yard is growing. It wasn't there before the mall. But something beautiful has been put there, so here comes the trash, with the city's blessings.

What makes a well-run city?

Start with urban planning. For a lay man like me, the ambiance should help. Pothole free roads for one. Well lighted streets. Resource sufficient infra-structure facilities, where drinking water runs at the turn of the tab, coupled with a decent supply of electricity at all times.

And amidst all the above, the effective use of human and social capital for work and leisure in that city.

At least, for this time, we should let dos Santos know that his award is a mockery dressed in $200,000 bills.

And, should President José Eduardo dos Santos insist that our award is genuine, then, maybe, we should all go down on our knees and pray - together with the rest of Africa!

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, June 09, 2015.
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.