Accra’s streets have grown used to a troubling sound. When a police siren pierces the air, it no longer automatically signals danger or urgency. Too often, it simply means that a private individual wants to move faster than everyone else. Traffic freezes, pedestrians wait, engines idle, and the city pauses, not for an emergency, but for convenience.
That pause, repeated day after day across the city, carries a cost. A real one.
Across the capital, the logic behind many of these police escorts is becoming harder to justify. Two or three vehicles are ushered through a busy intersection while hundreds of others are brought to a complete standstill. The individual in the convoy gains a few minutes. Everyone else loses them. In a city already strained by congestion, that trade-off is not neutral; it is economically damaging.
This matters because time in Accra is expensive. Not because it is glamorous, but because so much of the city’s economy depends on movement. Drivers are paid per trip. Traders rely on narrow delivery windows. Workers are measured by hours and output. When traffic is halted for non-essential sirens, time is quietly extracted from many people and handed to one. No receipt is issued, but the loss is tangible.
The effects are visible at any busy junction. Dozens of trotro passengers sit idle. Ride-hailing drivers miss trips or cancel bookings. Delivery vans burn fuel without moving an inch. When this scene plays out across several intersections, multiple times a day, the cumulative loss adds up to many work hours that will never be recovered. This is how small inefficiencies gradually harden into structural ones.
Fuel waste deepens the problem. Idling engines consume petrol, accelerate wear and tear, and add to air pollution. Commercial drivers feel these costs immediately. Higher fuel bills and more frequent maintenance do not remain isolated pressures for long; they are passed on. In the end, the public pays for a disruption it did not choose.
Beyond the economic toll lies a quieter but equally important institutional cost. Police escorts are not free. They consume officers’ time, vehicles, and attention, resources meant for public safety. When these are diverted to facilitate private movement without clear security justification, other duties are left unattended: traffic control, accident response, patrol visibility. Policing begins to look less like a public service and more like a privilege reserved for those with access.
Over time, this alters how citizens relate to authority. Sirens stop representing emergencies and begin to symbolize hierarchy. The unspoken message becomes unsettlingly clear: some people’s schedules matter more than the collective flow of the city. In a shared public space funded by taxpayers, that is a dangerous norm to normalize.
None of this applies to genuine emergencies. Ambulances, fire services, and real security threats deserve immediate right of way. Ghanaians understand this instinctively. Drivers pull aside without complaint because the purpose is clear and the benefit is collective. The problem arises when urgency is manufactured, when sirens replace planning, traffic management, or simple patience.
Cities that function well are deliberate about this balance. They limit escorts, define strict criteria, and treat sirens as a scarce public tool rather than a convenience. Doing so preserves their authority and protects the economy from unnecessary friction.
The issue, then, is not noise. It is cost. Every unnecessary siren imposes a small tax on time, fuel, productivity, and trust. Individually, each incident may feel minor. Taken together, they form a pattern of inefficiency that Ghana can ill afford.
Sometimes, improving economic performance does not require bold speeches or sweeping new policies. Sometimes, it simply requires resisting the urge to stop everyone, so that a few can pass.
