Will You Be Next To Die? The Rains Are Here

Every rainy season, Ghana pays the same heavy price: lives lost, homes destroyed, property washed away. In Accra and beyond, flooding has become an annual ritual not because it is unavoidable, but because we have chosen reckless repetition over responsibility.

The causes are no mystery. They are largely manmade. The solutions are equally well known. Yet year after year, almost nothing is done. We have perfected a tragic cycle: the rains come, the floods hit, the media blazes with reports, the nation wails and then we wipe our tears, change nothing, and wait for the next season to repeat the disaster.

This is not a problem of resources. It is a problem of attitude. At its core, it is indiscipline masquerading as helplessness.

Consider the evidence. We continue to build homes directly in waterways. Contractors install shallow drainage systems that cannot handle half a day’s downpour. Citizens dump refuse into open gutters as if they were extension of their trash bins. People use drainage channels as dumping grounds without a second thought. Many will not even clear the choked drain in front of their own property. We see the danger, yet we remain unperturbed.

Then the clouds gather. And at that moment, in full view of anyone watching, people drag piled-up refuse from their homes and hurl it into the gutters. The logic is simple: if rain washes it away, the problem is gone. Where it ends up, be it on someone else’s compound, a lagoon, the ocean, is of no concern. How can we blame leadership for that kind of behavior? Unless we propose stationing police officers outside every house whenever the sky darkens.

And let us be clear about leadership. Yes, authorities have failed. Town Council officials do not move house to house forcing residents to clear drains. But the deeper failure is ours collectively. Fellow Ghanaians build on waterways. Fellow Ghanaians issue permits for those structures. Fellow Ghanaians install electricity meters and water meters for irresponsible developers. Fellow Ghanaians have become so reckless that we have lost common sense itself.

The truth is uncomfortable but undeniable: we are not victims of nature. We are victims of our own choices. The floods do not come as a surprise. They come as a consequence.

As the rainy season sets in once again, we will watch the water rise. We will count the bodies. We will mourn on television. We will call for investigations and task forces. And then we will do nothing differently.

This year will not be an exception. Not because the rain is fiercer. Not because God is angry. But because we have decided, through our daily actions and inactions, that losing lives and property is simply the price to pay for living in this country.

Until we treat indiscipline as a slow, avoidable killer, the annual ritual will continue. The rains are here. Are we finally ready to change? Or just ready to die again? In deed some are already dead, will you or a loved one be the next?