Let's Demonstrate Maturity On Our Roads

Motorists who used the Abelemkpe traffic stretch along the Obasanjo Highway, last Thursday, witnessed a scene which deserved total condemnation from all well-meaning Ghanaians.

A man believed to be a soldier, and driving an unregistered white BMW saloon car, found his way blocked when the lights turned green, and decided to move over into the right lane.

There was a tro tro (mini bus) on his right, whose driver would not allow him, which provoked the soldier to, as it were, force his way through.

The trotro diver started to use unprintable words that provoked the soldier, who, after meandering his way in front of the trotro, stopped and walked towards it.

On arriving at the driver side of the trotro, the driver (an elderly person) retorted: "You think you can come and beat me here?"

The soldier asked the driver why he was insulting him, and before anybody could say Jack, the military man who was in a green military T-shirt over camouflage trousers, punched the face of the trotro driver, returned to his car and drove off.

The incident happened right in the presence of reporters of this newspaper, who were on their way to the office at Tesano, a suburb of Accra.

While condemning the trotro driver for his role in the unfolding event, The Chronicle thinks the soldier acted unprofessionally.

In this day of reports about mob action or instant justice happening all over the country, with the recent one, which led to the lynching of Capt. Maxwell Adams Mahama in Denkyira-Buase in the Western Region, one expected that the soldier would have exercised some restraint.

If after punching the trotro driver, and the man decided to punch him back, the driver's mate joins his master, and others in the trotro followed suit, what would have been the fate of the soldier?

Would it have been said that members of the public have, once again, taken the law into their own hands and beaten to death another military personnel?

In other parts of the world, soldiers in uniform are not allowed to come to town wearing them, and if so, only in an official vehicle. They go out of the camp/barracks unofficially in mufti (plain clothes).

If the soldier was not in uniform and had punched the trotro driver, The Chronicle believes nobody would have raised any qualms, as it is seen as a normal practice in Ghana for drivers to insult one another.

It is also normal that a driver who is highly temperamental, after being insulted by a colleague driver on the road, could step out of his car to engage in a verbal or physical encounter with whoever may be involved.

But, wearing a uniform and displaying this sort of unprofessional conduct in the full glare of members of the general public, leaves much to be desired.

The Chronicle is appealing to the Ministry of Defense and military high command to keep an eye on its personnel, to ensure that they refrain from misconducting themselves in public.

They must also ensure that military personnel are not allowed to use their uniforms to terrify or bully civilians, which, sometimes, results in making enemies for themselves without them having the slightest inkling.

The Road Safety Commission also has a major role to play, by educating motorists, especially drivers, to desist from using insulting words on their fellow drivers, to avoid any kind of clash between them and other motorists.

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