Every four years in Ghana, like clockwork, roads get a sudden makeover. Bulldozers appear, potholes vanish, and fresh asphalt is poured under a blazing sun — all in the name of development. For politicians, roads have become the ultimate campaign symbol.
Smooth roads are treated like smooth governance. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: Ghanaian politics is obsessed with roads and completely forgetful of the people who use them.
Why is every campaign littered with promises of feeder roads, interchanges, and highways — yet nothing is said about hospitals without beds, schools under trees, or jobless youth?
It’s because roads are visible. They are physical. They can be captured in photos and splashed across posters: “We delivered!” But delivering for people — fighting corruption in hospitals, making education accessible, ensuring farmers can earn enough to feed their families — that’s harder.
That doesn’t get quick applause. It requires time, integrity, and long-term planning.
Many Ghanaian communities have paved roads and yet no water. Beautiful highways lead to clinics without medicine. Entire districts boast new interchanges while their children learn without textbooks. It’s not that infrastructure isn’t important — it is.
But when it becomes the only proof of leadership, we start to build a nation on appearances, not impact.
The tragedy is that politicians think roads buy votes — and often, they’re right. Desperate communities accept half-done projects as progress, because the bar has been set so low. The people are starved for development, and so they cheer for the bare minimum.
But development isn’t just about connecting towns. It’s about empowering people. It’s about ensuring that the market woman on that smooth road can afford healthcare.
That the graduate on that flyover isn’t unemployed. That the children crossing that bridge aren’t headed to a broken school system.
Until politicians start campaigning with real solutions for real lives — not just tar and cement — Ghana will keep spinning its wheels on a smooth road to nowhere.
Source: NewsandVibes.com
