“We want to deter people who have no legitimate business to do in Legon from using our roads as a public thorough fare … and the university, as defined by law, reserves the right to give permission to whom it chooses to access our roads… We want to have a conducive environment to carry out academic work,” said head of Public Affairs at the University of Ghana, Mrs. Stella Amoah.
Madam Amoah was reacting to the brouhaha surrounding the restriction of vehicular access within the University of Ghana.
The university initially started collecting tolls from drivers who use roads within its campus to offset a loan they contracted to construct the roads. But this generated quite a storm of controversy resulting in the National Security Coordinator, Colonel Larry Gbevlo Lartey (rtd) demolishing one of the toll-booths because it was inconveniencing motorists.
Government subsequently intervened promising to pay the amount involved so that the university will stop collecting the tolls.
The University again on Saturday 15th March 2014, unilaterally blocked all access routes into the school bar the entrance from the Okponglo intersection for the 16,000 cars that use the campus as thoroughfare daily. Vehicles without an approved UG sticker were denied entry leading to traffic on the Legon-Madina Road.
The special stickers, some of which cost about Ghc400 a year per private car, guarantee entry through the closed points.
The University says the decision is aimed at reducing thoroughfaring on its campus as well as improving security and serenity for academic work.
Parents who were also taking their wards to the University of Ghana Basic School (UBS) on Monday were denied entry. The parents who were not happy with the university’s decision refused to buy the sticker for GHC 400, blocked the Westgate entrance to the university by parking their cars at security checkpoint and made their children walk the rest of the way to their classrooms, in protest of the university’s decision to restrict the general public from using its roads as a thoroughfare.
Speaking to Kwami Sefa Kayi, host of PeaceFM's flagship programme "Kokrokoo", Madam Stella said the university authorities had not yet made up their mind to allow access to everybody to use the roads within the campus because the university is not like ‘Abeka Lapaz’.
“This is something (a situation) that we had in the past and when the N1 as well as the Aburi roads were being constructed we opened up access to everybody. Now, the N1 is completed… we have provided land between us and GIMPA as a boundary road which anybody can use to get to the city… Just as in our secondary schools, we do not use our second cycle institutions as thorough fare, this is the University of Ghana, it has over 40,000 students…we are really getting close to an Abeka Lapaz if we use the University of Ghana as a public thoroughfare,” she indicated.
Madam Stella also condemned the attitude of the parents who blocked the entrance to the university's campus with their cars saying that was not the appropriate way to send their message across.
Though she maintained that parents would not be allowed to enter the university unless they had the 2014 UG sticker, Madam Amoah added that UG was making provision for students to be transported from the gate to the school and vice versa.
“on a daily basis, we are providing a means of transport from the gate to their school and we will do that also when they close from school,” she said.
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