I know we all like free stuff. If not free a lot of us like it when things are cheap and quality. I know a lot of people who will get scammed because they want to buy things at unbelievable prices. I don’t know if this is a normal thing in other places but down here in Ghana we have a very big problem at hand.
We all wanna be patriotic and good citizens but at times we are placed in certain situations to test how good we are. So here is my story.
3 days ago I made my journey from Tamale to Accra for the Christmas holidays. I usually use a public transit bus for my trips in and out of tamale. The trip from Tamale to Accra is about a 12-hour long journey depending on the traffic at hand. If the traffic is good for you, you will spend 12 hours but if it’s really bad am afraid you will need more than 12 hours to make it.
On our way I saw something that I’d heard of before but never really seen; or should I say something similar to this? I’ve heard of people looting from cargo vehicles when they get involved in accidents. The case I’ve heard of was when people were stealing beer from a truck that crashed. The amazing thing about this was that it was being aired on television and the police were nowhere to be found. Imagine the cost and damage this was gonna cause to the company.
So on the Accra Kumasi road, a tanker that carries petroleum was involved in an accident. Luckily it was not involved in a collision but what I think happened was it veered off the road due to some circumstances. The driver and his mate were nowhere to be found. As we were passing by one of the passengers on the bus screamed and said we should look at what people are doing. To my surprise, people had found means and ways of opening the tanker and were tapping out the fuel from the tanker.
What amazed me most about it was that I saw people with really nice cars park then and come out with their cans to loot some of the petroleum. It was an eye saw. The driver was in a hurry to get out of there since there was a possibility of anything bad happening. There were two policemen and a lady standing a few meters away and they couldn’t do anything. They looked on as this happened. It took the intervention of some men with sticks to get some of the people to stop.
This was really sad. Even though we all love cheap things, some are prepared to go the extreme to get it without thinking about the danger involved. Just imagine something had happened and this tanker caught fire, it would have been disastrous. So many people would have lost their lives. The tanker they were stealing from is someone’s business and they didn’t care how it will affect the owner.
I don’t know if it happens everywhere but this attitude of Ghanaians has to change or more problems for us.
All images are mine
