President John Dramani Mahama is right to condemn the indiscipline that worsens flooding in Accra.
No serious observer can deny the damage caused by plastic waste, blocked drains, illegal structures, weak planning enforcement, and construction on waterways.
These are real problems. They are visible whenever heavy rain turns parts of the capital into streams, ponds, and dangerous corridors of moving water.
But the claim that Accra’s flooding is “not an engineering problem” is wrong, incomplete, and potentially dangerous.
It is wrong because flooding is, by its nature, an engineering problem, even when it is also a social problem.It is incomplete because Accra’s flood crisis cannot be reduced to citizen indiscipline alone.
It is dangerous because political language shapes public policy. When leaders frame flooding mainly as a matter of discipline, the state may escape responsibility for decades of poor infrastructure planning, weak drainage investment, inadequate maintenance, poor land-use control, and fragmented water governance.
As a water resources engineer who has worked in Ghana, I agree that behaviour matters. But behaviour does not replace hydrology.
Discipline does not replace drainage capacity. Public education does not replace stormwater modelling. Demolishing structures on waterways does not remove the need for detention basins, culverts, channels, floodplain zoning, early-warning systems, solid-waste systems, and proper basin-wide planning.
The Problem With the President’s Statement
The problem with the President’s statement is not that he mentioned indiscipline. He is right to do so. Accra’s drains are often choked with refuse. Buildings have been erected in places where water should naturally pass. Some residents dump waste into gutters and later blame government when the same gutters overflow. These behaviours must be condemned.
To say Accra’s flooding is “not an engineering problem” gives the impression that engineers have no central role in the solution. That is misleading. It suggests that the problem lies almost entirely with ordinary citizens and their behaviour. That is also unfair.
The citizen who dumps plastic into a drain contributes to flooding, but the citizen did not design the city’s drainage network. The trader at the roadside did not approve buildings in floodplains. The schoolchildren walking through floodwater did not destroy wetlands through formal permits. The ordinary household did not decide that Accra should expand rapidly without matching .