The roar of the excavator pierced the air like a war siren. Within moments, concrete walls that had taken years of sacrifice, sleepless nights, and lifetime savings to build came crashing down in clouds of dust and despair. Children wept in confusion. Mothers screamed in agony. Fathers stood frozen, staring helplessly at the ruins of their homes like men attending their own funeral.
That was the heartbreaking reality of the recent demolition exercises at the Sakumono Ramsar site and elsewhere—a scene that exposed not only the human cost of illegal development but also the painful consequences of years of institutional failure, greed, and indiscipline.
It is deeply troubling to watch a man stand helplessly before a bulldozer, clutching the keys to a home he spent decades building, while government officials, clad in reflective jackets, calmly explain to television cameras that the structure was ‘illegally erected on a Ramsar site’.
For years, permits were allegedly issued, electricity was connected, water was supplied, property taxes were collected, and campaign promises were loudly made in those same communities. Yet suddenly, after elections are won, the buildings become ‘illegal structures.’ Apparently, in Ghana, a building can remain legal long enough for the owner to finish roofing it, furnish it, dedicate it in church, and host a housewarming party, only for the state to discover its illegality when demolition decisions are made. This is not merely poor governance. It is institutionalised complicity.
Since the restoration of constitutional governance under Ghana’s Fourth Republic in 1992, successive governments under both the NDC and the NPP administrations have undertaken numerous major decongestion and demolition exercises, particularly in Accra and other rapidly urbanizing areas. These interventions have often been justified on the basis of flood control, urban renewal, road and infrastructure expansion, environmental protection, sanitation improvement, and the enforcement of planning regulations.
However, we have not found a permanent solution to the ‘illegal’ erection of structures and buildings on waterways, in unauthorised places, and on Ramsar sites, nor have we found a permanent solution to the regular decongestion and demolition exercises in Accra and its environs. Why have these problems remained so persistently unresolved?
Ramsar Sites, Accra’s Demolitions and the Sacrificial Goats
The recent demolitions of structures on Ramsar sites in Accra have once again exposed the deep-rooted culture of lawlessness, greed, and political convenience that continues to erode Ghana’s moral and administrative foundations, like termites in an abandoned cocoa warehouse.
A Ramsar site is a wetland area designated under the Ramsar Convention, an international treaty adopted in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971 for the protection and sustainable use of wetlands. Ghana is a signatory to the convention and has several protected Ramsar sites, particularly around Accra, including Sakumono Lagoon, Densu Delta, Korle Lagoon wetlands, and Songhor Lagoon.
Ramsar sites play a vital role in environmental sustainability and ecological protection. They serve as natural flood-control systems by absorbing excess water, mitigating flooding, preserving biodiversity, and protecting critical wildlife habitats. Additionally, Ramsar sites enhance and maintain water quality through natural filtration. In simple terms, Ramsar sites are nature’s drainage system. Destroy them, and nature will eventually invoice you with floods, deaths, disease, and environmental disaster.
Given the vital environmental and socio-economic roles these sites play, any genuine attempt by state institutions to preserve them deserves not only support but also commendation. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. A Ramsar site can mysteriously transform into a residential area overnight. One moment, it is a protected wetland; the next, it becomes ‘Executive Lakeside Estate Annex.’ Somehow, chiefs allocate the land; land guards protect it; surveyors map it; officials stamp it; utility companies connect it; politicians campaign there; churches hold all-night services there; and banks even finance mortgages there. But after everybody has eaten from the illegal buffet, the poor homeowner becomes the sacrificial goat when demolitions begin. Certainly, people who knowingly build on waterways and Ramsar sites deserve criticism, as recklessness must not be excused; but it is dishonest to pretend that ordinary citizens alone created this chaos, because in Ghana, illegality rarely survives without official blessing.
When Greed Becomes Creed
The honest truth is that both those who sell reserved land and those who buy it are not ignorant; most of the time, they are greedy. Greed has become so normalised in Ghanaian society that illegality is now often treated as entrepreneurship. People build in waterways because someone wants money. Officials approve illegal permits because someone offered ‘something small.’ Politicians look away because illegal settlements become voting blocs. Traditional authorities release protected lands because luxury vehicles do not buy themselves. Even some religious leaders bless unlawful projects as long as thanksgiving offerings continue to flow to the altar. Ironically, many of the same people who condemn corruption in public will proudly recount how they ‘used connections’ to bypass regulations, as lawlessness has become a profitable venture.
Demolitions: Counting the Cost
Demolitions in Ghana are often portrayed as acts of decisive governance. In reality, many are monuments to institutional failure, because a functional state must prevent illegal construction before foundations are laid. By contrast, a dysfunctional state waits until families have invested life savings, businesses are established, children enrol in nearby schools, and entire communities have emerged before officials arrive with bulldozers and television cameras. The impact of demolition on affected individuals can be devastating:
lifetime investments destroyed,
emotional trauma,
displacement and family instability
loss of livelihoods
Some victims even suffer from all forms of ailments including strokes, depression, heart attacks, or financial ruin while others are pushed into poverty permanently.
But the homeowner is not the only loser in these demolition exercises. The taxpayers also lose heavily:
compensation lawsuits
security deployment costs
political backlash
environmental restoration expenses
reduced public trust
and the enormous economic waste of destroyed infrastructure.
Imagine the contradiction: a developing country struggling with housing deficits spends millions destroying completed buildings that should never have been approved in the first place.
Governments and the Politics of Convenient Blindness
Successive governments cannot escape blame. For decades, administrations from both major political traditions have tolerated illegal developments until situations became catastrophic.
Why? Because lawlessness and disorder appear to benefit too many powerful interests, and strict enforcement would inconvenience too many influential people. Governments often behave like negligent parents who ignore a child’s misconduct for years, only to overreact in public to appear responsible. The result is predictable: floods kill citizens, wetlands disappear, roads become congested, demolitions increase, public anger rises, and politicians promise never again, until the next election cycle.
Lessons from Developed Countries
Countries that have managed urban development successfully did not achieve them through occasional dramatic demolitions. They built strong systems. In countries such as Singapore, the Netherlands, Germany, and other developed jurisdictions, wetlands and waterways are fiercely protected through strict zoning laws, digital land administration systems, swift enforcement, transparent permitting processes, and severe penalties for violations.
In Singapore, for instance, illegal structures are often halted before completion because monitoring systems work efficiently and violators are severely punished, including a six-month prison term and fines of up to $50,000 for first-time offenders. The Netherlands, despite being highly vulnerable to flooding, protects wetlands with near-religious seriousness because national survival depends on environmental discipline. These countries understand a simple truth that Ghana continues to ignore: Prevention is cheaper than demolition.
Beneath the recurring demolitions in Ghana lies a much bigger problem: a lack of systems, or to be very mild, a lack of a working system. From where I stand, demolitions are not solutions; they are symptoms of years of systemic failures. In my view, demolitions are a failed system’s last-minute attempt to restore order, but because the underlying dysfunction remains, the cycle inevitably repeats until blame is assigned, at which point only the weakest link—the homeowner is punished.
When I was a student at the Ghana Institute of Journalism, one of my favourite courses was African Studies. It was in that course that I first encountered ‘Talcott Parsons’ Systems Theory’ and ‘Structural Functionalism’. Parsons was an American sociologist and one of the most influential social theorists of the 20th Century. Parsons’ systems theory views society as a complex system of interdependent parts, each performing specific functions necessary for the survival and stability of the whole. When these parts work in harmony, society remains orderly; when they do not, dysfunction and crisis emerge. Talcott Parsons’ theory helps us understand the persistent systemic failures across multiple sectors of our economy that have bedevilled us as a people and continue to slow our collective progress.
The Way Forward
Ghana does not lack laws or the agencies to enforce them. What we lack is a working system that makes it easy to enforce the law without fear or favour. We urgently need a system fix. But can the system really be fixed? I believe so, but frankly, it will take several years and the combined efforts of both the governors and the governed, and every institution in between, to ensure the system works well for all of us. Somehow, and in some way, all of us, both elites and have-nots, have contributed to, and continue to contribute to the chaos we are entangled in.
When the system is fixed, land ownership, zoning status, and permit approvals will be fully digitised and publicly accessible to reduce fraud and manipulation. A fixed system will make it easier for chiefs and landowners who unlawfully sell Ramsar lands, as well as buyers, to face legal consequences without any allegation of selective or political victimization. Moreover, under a working system, officials who approve illegal developments will face criminal sanctions, dismissal, and financial liability, and governments will have the political WILL and the courage to enforce laws consistently, not seasonally.
Conclusion
A nation cannot bulldoze its way out of lawlessness when governments allow illegality for years and then resort to demolitions. And until greed is no longer more powerful than the national conscience, demolitions will continue, wetlands will disappear, floods will worsen, and ordinary citizens will continue to pay the price for elites’ irresponsibility.
Indeed, lawlessness does not exalt a nation. It humiliates it publicly, floods it seasonally, corrupts it systematically, and finally destroys it, one illegal building permit at a time.
Ultimately, responsibility does not rest with state institutions or politicians alone; it rests with all of us, as we are all complicit. We have enabled disorder, tolerated contradictions, and, at times, benefited, sometimes silently, from a broken system. Perhaps, this is why the words of Jonathan Michael Teye (J.M.T.) Dosoo’s enduring patriotic refrain in ‘Arise Ghana Youth For Your Country’ remains so instructive today: We are all involved X3, In building our motherland.
Ghana’s future will not be secured by bulldozers, but by institutions strong enough to prevent lawessness before destruction becomes necessary.