I recently posted an article titled THE AMA AND HER BYE-LAWS" but that was just a tip of the challenges the inhabitants of the Accra Munical Assembley are facing. I focused my discuss on the East Ayawaso Sub Metro to allow us deal with practical concerns endangering lives of the people in the community the authority is meant to address. Our AMA is now the first point of lawlessness and everyone is now free to be lawless.
This lawless misfortune is the normal experience in all the other AMA submetros within in Accra.
I have always said, decent life result from a lawful society. Remove civil law out of the life of a people and everyone assume the life of an animal. The type of laws a people live by determines the nature and quality of their existence. Law exist in any animal group but we in East Ayawaso Sub Metro are being removed from the civilised laws of our AMA and slipping into the abyss of a primitive animal kingdom.
Nima is the capital of East Ayawaso Sub Metro and an hour's experience of life within this locality can be compared only with Arnold schwarzenegger experience on Mars.
Indeed a land of mystery. It is very complicated locality because of the abnormal way things are done. It is like living in the suburb of Accra in the years preceding the independence of Ghana. It is really a society unto whom the laws of the Republic Ghana or the AMA are alien, replace with assortments of tribal cum religious laws.
The triats of the AMA authority in the East Ayawaso Sub Metro, manifest only in the One Way revenue collection system. The representatives of the AMA are among the numerous revenue collectors that scout the community daily, competing with their rivals to extort whatever they could get out of the destitutes inhabiting the community. These people are very poor and formally consider as unemployed but the little extortions make each of them pay more in unaccountable tax than an average civil servant. That is where the laws of the AMA stops, as far as we are concern in the community.
Unlike other communities in Ghana, Nima and other AMA Sub Metros are very ockward. The localizations of almost every tribal people from all over the Ghanaian underdeveloped hinterlands and across West Africa, searching for better urban life, has resulted into assortments of group formations. Some academic psychos will mistaken this tribal cum religious lawless concoction as Multi Culturism but I will rather called it Darker Side of Ghana.
Every single group has its institutions and laws. Under the common unbralla of Zongo Chiefs and sub Chiefs, championed by the famous self seeking Umoru Baba Issah, we have nothing less than sixty (60) tribal chiefs for a population of less than thirty thousand people. Each of the group also has its own Imam and sub imams, who are combining religion, tribalism and political opportunism into a single role to sustain their selfish interests. We also have sectarian Imams, like the Shiat, Khadiria, Ahamedia, Wahabiaya, etc. We even have the new evangelical churches lurking in the fringes to cash in on the bad situation. Not to mention hardcore fanatics who provide leadership platforms for drug users and mentally disturbed persons, to be use as political hooligans at elections. The lakadestical lawless AMA allow these individuals to cash in on the half hazard administrative mechanism to fund their neferous fiefdoms by extorting money from the weak and vulnerable for natural things like toilet, waste disposal or street vendoring fees.
Local authority Civil laws are made to regulates and transform people from whatever is wrong with them into decent citizens of the community. The AMA Bye Laws provide for this at the grassroots. The laws and institutions of these primitives clausters, than the AMA Civilized Bye Laws, are what reign in our community. These reigns of terror are upheld and enforced by the self imposed leaderships of these bodies. Everyone is free to break any law in our community, as long as whatever is done get accommodated by the tribal cum religious ethos. All one needs in East Ayawaso Sub Metro is to have collaborators and a whole street is transformed into a stinking dirty u motorable paths, where drug pushers hawk their stuff, while decent people dare to walk.
The AMA officials and the police officers have learnt to avoid being lure into the ghettos. The shantis, ghettos and slums, are not no go areas to the local authority. It is not uncommon to have superior officers blaming those under them for straying into the drakerness of their own authority and thaught the harsh lessons in a broad day light.
The common expression among the inhabitants is "The AMA officials are corrupt so they dare not come here". Ironically, the Demi gods of the shanties are the same ones who set their drug addicts to attack the local governments and police officials, to make the stay off the areas. The same people then coined up expression justifying and allowing the Demi tribal cum religious authority to reign, in place of the legitimate local institution.
The AMA is now cowed out of its own jurisdiction. It is now seeming to be content with the role of doing virtually nothing, giving endless excuse, after collecting the little revenue that strayed into the institution's pocket. They collect the money for nothing and see nothing wrong with the lawless nature of the community. Just have a reason to take a complain to the AMA sub metro office and the hungry officers will be asking you to pay for their transportation to do their own work.
The Nima Police Station is another culprit that cash in on this unfortunate inhabitant of the community. The failure of a functioning AMA Bye-Laws result into individuals applying their own laws. It is not uncommon for things to get out of hand anywhere and at anytime. Most of these then end up in the pre-set police net, that are so good at commercialising and exploiting the already bad situation.
One hardly notice any difference in the lawlessness of the Nima Market, the Nima High Way and the Nima Police Station. All have dirty looking destitutes aimlessly loitering everywhere and places of worships erected on them. The last thing that crosses one's mind is going to the Nima Police Station to report a noisy Church, Mosque, a neighbour or a notorious noisy music vendor. The noise and location of a religious structure within the premises of the nation's police station, says it all.
The fact is, we have been abondon by our AMA and left to drown in our own vomit of ignorance. Everyone does as they please. Every rouge that excel in his/her togry gets turbaned into the Zongo elite of Chiefs, to enforce Zongo animal laws over us and prepare us for political exploitations. This is indeed unbearable but as the AMA is first in breaking everyone of its own Local Authority Laws, our hope of redemption slips further away.
We are however not giving up yet, as we are critically looking at how to overcome this manice of tribal cum religious Godfatherism cancer devouring generations of decent Ghanaians in their prime. We still have our Republican flame burning in us, as we pour our heart to the poor Ghanaian. If we have to do it, then we have to do it but only with the mandate of the Ghanaian citizens.
Kofi Ali Abdul-Yekin
Chair/Coordinator
ECRA (ECOWAS Citizens' Right Advocates)
[email protected]
0579096749
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