A disturbing video recently surfaced online showing a concrete fence, believed to be part of the Achimota-Ofankor flyover, chipped away, its embedded iron rods cruelly yanked out, likely by scrap thieves. In another equally troubling clip, a man is seen casually clutching a stack of stolen house number plates, holding them like cheap market goods, stripped of their identity and significance.
Outrage erupted, as it should. The culprits were rightly called thieves, saboteurs, even enemies of the state.
But pause for a moment and look deeper—are they really any different from the people in expensive suits signing inflated contracts in air-conditioned offices? Is this not the same corruption, only passed down, watered to the level where the powerless can finally participate in what they have always watched from afar?
The scrap dealer doesn’t sit in boardrooms. He doesn’t sign shady procurement deals, he doesn’t inflate budgets or take kickbacks to cripple public projects. But he has learned. He has watched the powerful steal in plain sight, smile for the cameras, win awards, and earn national honours for their “service.” And so, from his street corner, he too has found a way to eat from the same poisoned tree, by stealing iron rods, streetlights, drain covers, and now house number plates.
Yes, it is outrageous. Yes, it is dangerous. These petty thefts could lead to deadly road collapses, unlit highways, and fatal accidents. Our beloved Tema motorway is shrouded in darkness because the cables that light it up are stolen night after night. People die driving through that void. Real lives. Real blood.
Video credit: A concerned citizen.
But here’s the question: do we calculate the deaths caused by corruption in high places the same way we mourn the ones caused by petty theft? What about the pregnant woman who died because a hospital couldn’t be completed, because the money was ‘eaten’? What about the children who still study under trees because someone inflated the cost of school buildings and pocketed the rest? What about the lives lost in preventable disasters because a bribe was paid for someone to look away?
You see, the man with the pickaxe breaking concrete is only doing what the man with the pen has done for years. Stealing from the state. The same crime. Different tools.
Corruption in Ghana is no longer just a boardroom problem. It has spilled onto the streets. It is now a trade for the poor as it is for the rich. Everyone is learning to steal from the state, from where they stand. Because we have tolerated and glorified corruption in high places, we now face its angry shadow at the lowest rungs of society.
If we continue to turn a blind eye to high-level corruption and only express outrage when the poor steal iron rods or drain covers, we are only treating the symptoms, not the disease. Sooner or later, something more precious will be stolen and by then, there will be no concrete left to chip away at, no institution left to trust, no country left to save.
Corruption is corruption, whether in a handshake over a bloated contract or in the quiet theft of a crash barrier in the dead of night. The value is the same. The shame is the same. The consequences, in the end, are shared by us all.
So let’s stop pretending. Let’s fight it from the top if we hope to stop it at the bottom. Because if we don’t, this house—our country, will keep collapsing, one stolen rod, one stolen soul at a time.
