Of course, the other even more serious aspect of this act of heinous criminality is that it obstructs the smooth flow of traffic and ends up costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of drivers and commuters every year and, with the latter, millions of cedis and the profuse bleeding of the country’s economy (See “Dr. Adam Bonaa Arrests Driver of Chinese Company Car[sic] Emptying Concrete on Tarred Road” Ghanaweb.com 1/22/22). Which is why locally renowned security expert Dr. Adam Bonaa ought to be commended for recently effecting the citizen’s arrest of the Ghanaian driver of a Chinese company-owned concrete mixer that was found to be emptying its concrete residue on a road near the Togolese Embassy in Accra, all the way to the ultramodern highway near the Burma Camp vicinity of the Greater-Accra Metropolis.
I am fairly familiar with the area described by Dr. Bonaa on his social media web page. And on the latter count must also be promptly pointed out that in the front passenger seat of the concrete-mixing truck, we are informed by Dr. Bonaa, was a Chinese national who presumably was the foreman of the company whose truck was literally defecating raw concrete mixture on our roadways. We are also informed that both men were well aware of the fact that it was a criminal offense to spill concrete mixtures on our roadways and highways, which ought to make any penalties or disciplinary measures meted them and the construction company which employed these two men all the more severe.
Which is not either to say or imply that their ignorance of the law would have served to excuse or mitigate their insufferably and heinously criminal behavior. I am dangerously close to recommending that the death penalty be meted these two nation-wreckers and the Chinese owner or owners of the company for which they allegedly work. I bet they would not think of destroying roadways in China without also immediately thinking about their own very survival and existence. Now, what the government needs to do is to compare notes with Dr. Bonaa, the national security expert and patriotic and exemplarily conscientious Ghanaian citizen who effected the citizen’s arrests of these two environment-polluting nation-wrecking scumbags, by assessing the extent of the damage wreaked by the employer or employers of these two criminal suspects and presenting a bill covering the full-cost of the damage done to the roads on which the concrete mixture was spilled to the company that owns the truck employed in such gross act of wanton criminality.
Punitive damages or fines should also be added to the bill for the owners of the aforesaid Chinese company to foot. The Roads and Highways Minister, Mr. Kwasi Amoako-Atta, must also ensure that these culprits serve at least a mandatory prison sentence, with the Ghanaian truck driver serving at least twice the length of the prison sentence meted his Chinese counterpart or coworker. There must be absolutely no easy way out here. Which means that deporting the Chinese accomplice of this reckless and criminally minded Ghanaian truck driver should be totally ruled out of question. If the government decides that the Chinese national deserves to be kicked out of the country, this must be factored into the equation only well after his prison sentence has been fully served, in much the same way that a Ghanaian or an African criminal suspect and/or convict would be treated by the Chinese government, were a Ghanaian national be found to be guilty of a similar crime in the People’s Democratic Republic of China.
Deporting non-African criminal convicts in Ghana is a patently unsavory and philosophically unwise inferiority-complex approach to the ministration of justice. It is simply unacceptable and legally outrageous. Finally, the operational license of the construction company involved in the criminal wrecking of our roadways and highways must be promptly revoked to serve as a deterrent to any would-be copycat environmental polluters and nation-wreckers. Ghanaians need to demonstrate to our contractually bound or bonded foreign guests and coworkers that we are duly imbued with a great sense of national self-respect, dignity and civic responsibility like themselves. That is the only way for us, as a people, to expect to be respected by the rest of the membership of our global human community.
*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
January 22, 2022
E-mail: okoampaahoofekwame@gmail.com
