Armed Sand Raiders Rip Up Newly Built Road Weeks After Military Takeover
By Gifty Boateng
The $4.7 billion Accra–Kumasi Expressway, President John Dramani Mahama’s flagship infrastructure project, has been attacked by heavily armed illegal sand miners who have carved up a newly constructed section of the road, dug deep trenches with excavators, and carted away over a hundred trips of sand all within days of the President symbolically handing the project to the Ghana Armed Forces.
The destruction at Sewua in the Ashanti Region has enraged residents, who say they cannot confront the perpetrators because they are protected by gunmen who fire warning shots to keep people away. The residents are demanding that the President immediately direct the military engineers to return to the site, investigate the damage, and ensure those responsible are punished.
The incident is a serious embarrassment for the government, coming barely a month after Mahama handed over the project to the GAF’s Civil Engineering Department at a ceremony at Kwaso. The soldiers are not expected to return to site until December to begin actual construction work.
Residents led social media influencer Amaro Shakur to the damaged stretch, where the scale of the destruction became clear. What was once a smooth, newly prepared road surface is now scarred by large potholes and deep excavations.
“We will plead with the military engineers the work you came to do in the Ashanti Region, specifically at Sewua, some unscrupulous persons are destroying it through sand winning,” Shakur said after the tour. “They are weaning sand and moving through Doyina to Sewua to sell. They have even created their own path, passing this side to Tetrefu and then to Doyina.”
“This is not how they [soldiers] made the road,” he added. “It was very smooth, but come and see there are big potholes on the road now because of someone’s selfish interest.
They used their excavators to do it. From here to Kwaso, where the President performed the handover ceremony, is just about three minutes’ drive. A road that is starting in December look at what has been done to it because they want to sell sand.”
One resident, who asked not to be named for security reasons, said the destruction had occurred within just three days of the soldiers leaving the site.
“Initially, we heard they were involved in illegal mining (galamsey),” the resident said. “Ghana is always crying about deplorable roads. God has listened to our cry we have a President who has spent money and given the work to the soldiers, who are spending nights here.
But as soon as they left the scene, look at what unscrupulous people have done. They have dug the newly constructed road to make way for sand winning. They used machines excavators and others and have dug deeper into the road. It is wickedness. They have weaned over a hundred trips of sand already.”
The resident added that the suspects had filled a section of the road with red sand after their vehicle got stuck, to create a passage for their operations. They urged investigators to trace the perpetrators to Doyina, where tipper trucks load sand, insisting a proper investigation would expose those behind the destruction.
Another resident disclosed that the sand winners come with macho men wielding guns to protect them, aware that their activities are illegal.
“They know they will be arrested because what they are doing is counterproductive. We wanted to monitor them, but it was not safe because they are using guns,” the resident said.
“What I would tell the President is that he should direct the military who came to spend nights here to come back and investigate. Government wants to open up Accra and Kumasi, yet some bad nuts, because of their selfish interest, are damaging it because they want to sell sand.”
Residents also questioned why the perpetrators fire warning shots, noting that since it is known that soldiers are working on the expressway, the shots make people assume it is the military at work.
The residents later took the reporter to a nearby house where a man reportedly purchased some of the sand when the trucks were passing through. The man was not at home to grant an interview. However, a woman at the house explained the situation, with piles of the sand visible on the side of the building.
“He bought the land from the people when they were passing by,” she said.
The Accra–Kumasi Expressway is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in Ghana’s history. The decision to hand it to military engineers was presented as a bold move to ensure discipline, speed, and quality. But the events at Sewua suggest that even the military’s involvement may not be enough to protect the project from the powerful interests that have long profited from illegal sand winning and land degradation in the region.
The residents remain hopeful that swift government intervention will save the project from further destruction. But with the perpetrators still at large, armed and emboldened, and the military not due back until December, the fear is that the damage done so far is only the beginning.