'I've Been Trying So Hard To Understand What Motivates Local Authorities To Give 'Funny' Names To Streets In Ghana'

Ghanaian socialite and entertainment critic, Kwame Asare Obeng who is widely known as Kwame A Plus has questioned the motive behind local authorities giving names like Pawpaw Street, Cabbage Street, Cowpea Street, and other funny names to streets.

According to him, he has been trying so hard to understand what motivates local authorities to give such names to streets in Ghana.

He made this known in a recent post he made on the popular social media platform, Facebook and it reads;

“I’ve been trying so hard to understand what motivates local authorities to give such names to streets in Ghana.

We can raise a lot of money from street naming. Can you imagine how much we will make or how many roads can be built if we organize an event where the president, the regional minister and representatives of MMDA’s invite companies, individuals and businesses from home and abroad to an auction, where street names are auctioned to individuals/businesses who can pay

for already built roads, name it after themselves/their business and be given the responsibility to maintain them over a period of time; or individuals/businesses build new roads, name it after themselves/their business, and maintain over them over a period of time?

When you take taxes, what do you use the money for? To build roads amongst other things. So what do you give in return to these companies and individuals who are going to build the roads? Tax cuts!!

Cabbage cannot build roads!! Why not Despite St. or Ofori Sarpong Ave? Why not Cheddar, Kinapharma, Hisense, Samsung or Dzata Cement St. and let them build, give it their preferred names, and advertise their business exclusively on there for a certain number of years?

Same as car numbering in Ghana. We can make more money than we are making. Prempeh colleges, Achimota school, Presec, Wesley girls, Accra Academy, Adisco etc have millions of people who attended these school. These schools have a data of alumni. Why don’t we assign special numbers to these school so that interest students pay a premium to get a special number. Can’t we have Wesley Girls + student ID number + year of registration; (WG 2531- 22) and share proceeds from this registration exercise with the school to support school feeding, instead of AS, GR CR for every car where we make just a token? If CR tells us that the car is from Central Region then what? It is better to generate funds internally and stop running to IMF. If we keep doing what we have been doing, we shall keep getting what we have been getting and keep being where we have always been.

At prempeh College, all student have a special number. I don’t know about other schools. With proper publicity, I’m very confident a lot proud Prempeh boys will like to pay a premium for a “PC 1055 – 22” (prempeh collage 1055-22) number plate. It will make it even more easier to identify cars and their owners. To keep them safe, you can also link an them extra GR or AS numbers place to their customized number plates so that they can use that one when they want to go and cheat on their wives, they can change it.

These are some wild ideas I’m getting. I know you can make some better inputs to broaden what I’ve proposed. I’ll like to hear from you.

Let’s #discuss.

Kwame Asare-Obeng, B.Sc.PA. Gimpa. (You people die for this country )