President John Dramani Mahama has said Local councils and traditional rulers are part of the problem surrounding the persistent flooding challenges in the capital today.
According to John Mahama, the lack of institutional accountability at the local level.
He also highlighted the public pushback, which often hinders the demolition of structures built illegally in waterways.
President Mahama, in a news card shared by TV3, stated, “When government takes action and collapses houses in waterways, the same people will say ‘aban tiri mu ye den’. The local councils and traditional rulers are part of the problem”.
Meanwhile, John Mahama has said the perennial flooding in Ghana’s capital, Greater Accra, is not an engineering problem.
According to John Mahama, the flooding in Accra is just a problem of indiscipline.
Speaking at a Town Hall meeting with Ghanaians in the diaspora on May 31st, 2026, explained, “The flooding in Accra is not an engineering problem. It is just a problem of indiscipline. It’s not an engineering problem; it’s a problem of indiscipline. We have drains, and everybody says ‘why don’t you do sealed drains?’ But the problem is, when we do sealed drains, people drink sachet water, they eat papaya in those styrofoam plastics, and they just dump them anywhere.
And these plastics wash into the drain, and they go and block the drain. And so if you have to unclog the drain, you have to remove all the drain covers and clean it out. You clean it out, and then again in the next three, four, five months, they have clogged again.
But that is not even the major problem. The major problem is the location of Accra. You have the Akuapim Mountain Range, and you have the Atlantic Ocean. Before people came to Accra, you had the Lafa stream, you had the Densu, you had the Sakumo stream, you had the Kole stream, you had the Odo stream — all of them were rainwater that falls in the mountains that flows through to the Atlantic Ocean”.
He further narrated, “Then you come and build a city in the path of those streams. What do you expect the streams to do? And even if you build, leave the courseways. If you come to London, you can see the canals in the city. If you go and build a house in that canal, where will the water go? It will go back into people’s houses.
Unfortunately, our traditional rulers are selling plots in streams. It’s not this ‘Nana nom’ I’m talking about, oh. We have places they call Ramsar sites. These Ramsar sites are wetlands. And they said that migratory birds come from Europe during the winter; they come and spend vacation with us in Africa.
Then when they finish the vacation, in the summer they fly back. And decided to protect the Ramsar sites because of the migratory birds. But let me tell you what the Ramsar sites do: they are wetlands. So when they receive the water from the Akwapim mountain range, the Ramsar sites are huge wetlands, so they absorb the water into the wetlands and discharge the water gradually into the ocean”.
Mahama added, “So if you build and you fill and build, you fill and build, you fill and build, you are reducing the size of the Ramsar site, of the wetland. And so when the water comes, what is left cannot contain the water, and so it will overflow and flood people’s houses.
I’ve seen from the air, by helicopter, a stream coming from the Akwapim range, and then it reaches somewhere, and they’ve built across it. And so the stream has nowhere to continue, so it will flood your houses and flood houses of people behind. Now, when the government takes action and begins breaking people’s houses out of the waterway, the same people will say the government is wicked”.
See the post below:
"Local councils and traditional rulers are part of the problem" – President John Dramani Mahama on Accra Floods
— #TV3GH (@tv3_ghana) May 31, 2026
Addressing the enforcement issues surrounding the persistent flooding challenges in the capital today, 31st May, 2026, President John Dramani Mahama pointed to a lack… pic.twitter.com/hHaEK8tXgz
