By Abdulhaq Ibrahim

Every rainy season, Ghana returns to a familiar tragedy. The clouds gather, the rains fall, the drains overflow, homes are submerged, roads become rivers, and lives are lost. Then, almost immediately, the national conversation returns to one repeated explanation: citizen indiscipline.

We are told that the floods happen because people dump refuse into gutters, build in waterways, ignore sanitation laws, and violate planning regulations. There is truth in this. A drain choked with plastic cannot carry stormwater. A building constructed in a waterway will obstruct the natural flow of water. A society that treats gutters as waste bins will suffer the consequences.

But this explanation is not enough.

Ghana’s recurring floods are not simply the result of bad behaviour by citizens. They are the result of a deeper crisis of governance, urban planning, weak state capacity, political neglect, and a profit-driven capitalist development model that has treated land, housing, sanitation, and infrastructure as opportunities for private gain rather than as public goods necessary for human survival.

President John Dramani Mahama himself has given voice to the dominant view. Speaking at a Diaspora Town Hall Meeting in London, he reportedly described flooding in Accra as “just a problem of indiscipline.” Former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo made a similar argument in 2022, saying that no amount of public expenditure could solve Accra’s flooding if citizens continued with undisciplined waste habits.

There is no need to dismiss this concern. Citizens must act responsibly. People must stop dumping refuse into drains. Illegal construction must end. Sanitation laws must be obeyed. But the real question is this: who designs the city, who enforces planning laws, who approves building permits, who funds drainage systems, who maintains gutters, who protects wetlands, and who regulates land use?

These are not duties of individual citizens. They are responsibilities of the state.

The June 2026 floods once again exposed the scale of the problem. The Ghana News Agency reported that the floods displaced 7,761 households, affected 38,802 people, left 12 people dead, and seven others missing. The Interior Minister also told Parliament that the downpour recorded 593.2 millimetres of rain, the highest monthly total since 1995. Reuters also reported that at least 12 people had died after torrential rains flooded large parts of Ghana, including Accra, with rescue operations still underway.

These are not just numbers. They are workers, traders, children, tenants, drivers, families, and communities. Flooding affects us all, but it does not affect us equally. The heaviest burden is carried by working people: those living in poorly planned communities, those without secure housing, those whose livelihoods depend on markets, roads, transport, and daily movement.

From my own eyewitness point of view, what stood out during the disaster was not simply disorder. It was solidarity. The same people often described as “indisciplined” were the same people who came out to help rescue others. They entered floodwaters to pull neighbours to safety. They carried children. They helped the elderly. They opened their homes to stranded families. They directed traffic where roads had become dangerous. They used their own strength, vehicles, tools, and local knowledge to save lives before official help could reach everyone.

This matters because it challenges the one-sided moral judgement. A people who can organise around disaster are not incapable of discipline, cooperation, or collective responsibility. They are capable of solidarity. They are capable of public action. They are capable of protecting one another. The problem is that too often this collective energy appears after disaster has already arrived.

If we can organise around a flood, surely we can organise against the root causes of flooding.

Those root causes go beyond littering. Ghana’s own Auditor-General has provided strong evidence that flooding is also a state capacity crisis. A performance audit of flood control drains found that between 2015 and 2019, the Hydrological Services Department constructed only 12.2 kilometres, representing 11 percent of a targeted 110 kilometres of drains. None of the retention ponds targeted for 18 drainage basins was completed. The audit also found that the Department did not produce drainage master plans to guide coordinated drainage development, and that maintenance of completed drains was not prioritised in annual plans and budgets.

This is not citizen indiscipline. This is institutional failure.

When the state fails to produce drainage master plans, fails to construct planned drains, fails to maintain existing drains, and fails to coordinate agencies responsible for flood control, it cannot place the main blame on ordinary citizens. A plastic bottle in a gutter can be photographed and condemned. A missing drainage master plan is less visible, but it may be far more dangerous.

The President’s own actions after the floods also confirm that the issue is structural. Following a tour of affected communities, the Presidency reported that President Mahama directed MMDAs to identify and map obstructions along major drainage channels, authorised the demolition of buildings obstructing waterways, tasked NADMO to identify victims and provide relief, and directed the release of contingency funds for emergency support and repairs. If the solution requires national coordination, MMDA enforcement, emergency finance, demolition authority, NADMO intervention, and drainage mapping, then the cause cannot be reduced to individual behaviour alone.

At the root of this crisis is the way our cities have been organised under capitalism. Land has become a commodity. Wetlands become real estate opportunities. Waterways are encroached upon because someone can profit from them. Housing is left to the market, making decent accommodation unaffordable for many working people. Waste management is treated as a business opportunity rather than a universal public service. Drainage projects become contract opportunities instead of life-saving infrastructure.

This is the logic of the profit-driven city. It values private accumulation over public safety. It protects the interests of developers, landlords, contractors, and politically connected actors, while working people are left to live in vulnerable spaces and then blamed when disaster comes.

This does not mean every individual act is directly caused by capitalism in a simple way. People still make choices. Some dump refuse. Some build illegally. Some ignore sanitation rules. But these choices are made within a system that rewards profit, shortcuts, speculation, and political connection more than collective welfare. When housing is unaffordable, people settle wherever they can. When waste collection is unreliable or costly, illegal dumping increases. When enforcement is selective, people learn that rules can be negotiated. When land use is captured by money and influence, the environment is sacrificed.

The solution must therefore be more than technical. Ghana does not only need bigger drains. Ghana needs a people-centred model of development.

We need urban planning that puts human life before profit. We need public investment in drainage, sanitation, housing, waste management, and climate adaptation. We need strict but fair enforcement of planning laws, not enforcement that targets only the poor while protecting the wealthy and politically connected. We need public housing so that working people are not forced into unsafe settlements. We need transparent land administration so citizens can know who approved buildings in flood-prone areas. We need community participation in planning, budgeting, monitoring, and flood prevention.

Above all, we need collectivism. The safety of the many must come before the profit of the few.

A people-centred flood policy must treat sanitation and drainage as public goods, not private luxuries. Waste collection must be universal and affordable. Plastic regulation must be serious. Wetlands must be protected. Drainage projects must be transparently procured and properly maintained. MMDAs must be resourced and insulated from partisan interference. Citizens must be educated, but education must be matched with services and enforcement.

The national debate must therefore move beyond blaming citizens alone. Yes, citizens have duties. We must protect the environment, obey the law, stop dumping refuse into drains, and reject illegal construction. But governments exist precisely because individual discipline alone cannot design cities, enforce planning regulations, maintain drains, regulate developers, coordinate disaster response, or protect lives.

The June 2026 floods showed tragedy, but they also showed possibility. They showed that ordinary people can organise. They showed that working people can act with courage and solidarity. They showed that communities can mobilise quickly when lives are at stake.

Now that same spirit must be turned toward prevention.

If we can organise to rescue people from floodwaters, we can organise to demand proper drainage before the rains. If we can carry children to safety during disaster, we can carry a political demand for safer communities. If we can open our homes to neighbours after floods, we can open our communities to collective planning before floods.

Let us organise and strive to improve our conditions as working people. Let us organise in our communities, unions, workplaces, markets, schools, churches, mosques, media houses, and local assemblies. Let us demand cities built for people, not profit.

Ghana’s floods are not acts of God alone. They are acts of policy, planning, neglect, capitalism, and political choice. And because they are produced by human systems, they can be changed by organised human action.

The safety of the many must come before the profit of the few.