By Hans Ngala
A helicopter crash in Ghana on August 6 killed all eight persons on board, including two government ministers. Ghana’s president, John Mahama, had initially been scheduled to be on the flight but made a last-minute decision not to fly due to a conflicting schedule.
Ghanaian authorities have taken samples from the bodies, which were all burnt beyond recognition, for identification at a forensics lab in South Africa. While the deceased included Muslims who would have been buried immediately by Islamic tradition, this process was impeded as it is impossible to identify the charred remains of the crash victims.
While the cause of the crash itself has not yet been determined, some sources suggest that bad weather, coupled with the old helicopter’s poor maintenance record, might have played a role. Add that to the fact that the remains of the victims have to be flown halfway across the continent to South Africa.
While Ghana has a forensic lab that made preliminary findings on the crash, CNA learned that they still needed an internationally recognised one to be sure of the results. The trip to South Africa was sponsored by the brother of the President, Ibrahim Mahama, to take the remains to South Africa for international confirmation.
Besides Ghana, other West African countries, including Cameroon, do not have even one forensic laboratory. This speaks to the clear neglect by West African governments, which never prioritize public infrastructure that benefits their very own people.
It is no secret that African officials neglect the health infrastructure in their own countries and often have to travel overseas or to South Africa for medical attention. Just weeks ago, Nigeria’s former President, Muhammadu Buhari, died at a London hospital, not in Nigeria. Before him, Zambia’s former president, Edga Lungu died in neighboring South Africa at a hospital there, not in Zambia. Even the Africa regional director of the World Health Organization, Tanzanian Dr. Faustine Ndugulile, caused quite some controversy when he flew to India for medical attention while beginning a stint as WHO Africa Regional Director. While it is not known where or when Cameroon’s Paul Biya seeks medical attention because authorities claim that discussing his health is “an issue of national security,” – these leaders epitomize what is wrong with African leaders: People who do not care about the citizens they are called to lead. The leaders can cater for themselves and their families, so the rest just have to survive somehow.
However, African leaders have the opportunity to learn from the tragic incident in Ghana and use that as an example to improve on the health infrastructure in their own countries. Setting up proper functioning facilities like forensics labs will help to improve the infrastructure that matters, instead of investing in frivolous ones. Cameroon spends billions of CFA on football stadia, paying footballers and athletes while hospitals are without incubators that cost just 6 million CFA per unit, rural hospitals do not have even a single physician and all Cameroonian hospitals suffer from a shortage of medical specialists – all while government ministers live in opulence, ride the most expensive cars and have large convoys to make them feel important while underperforming. African leaders need to set their priorities straight. The recent COVID-19 pandemic was kind to African countries by some divine providence, and yet, instead of learning from the errors we made during both the 2014 Ebola outbreak and the COVID-19 outbreak, our leaders seem to never be preemptive but always want to be reactive. The next health or public catastrophe to hit may be too deadly for us to survive because we always believe we can survive or that it will not touch us, until it does.
It is both shameful and unjust that in 2025, African nations still lack the most basic public infrastructure, from adequately equipped hospitals to functioning forensic laboratories. The fact that the remains of Ghanaian crash victims had to be flown to South Africa for identification is not just an indictment of Ghana alone, but of the broader failure of governance across West Africa. It is unacceptable that countries with rich natural resources and decades of independence are still unable to provide essential services for their citizens, especially when it comes to life-and-death matters like health and justice.
When leaders seek medical care abroad, they send a clear message to their citizens: our systems are not good enough for us, but they are good enough for you. This double standard erodes public trust and deepens inequality. More importantly, it creates a vicious cycle in which local facilities are neglected because those in power never have to use them. If African presidents, ministers, and members of parliament were legally required to receive medical care within their own countries, there would be a swift transformation of the public health sector. Hospitals would be upgraded overnight, doctors would be trained and better paid, and infrastructure would suddenly become a priority, not because of moral conviction, but because of self-preservation.
The same principle applies to forensic science, emergency response systems, and even maternal and child healthcare. Leaders must begin to see that developing infrastructure is not charity; it is a responsibility. The lives of their citizens — the people who vote for them, pay taxes, and keep the economy running — should matter enough to justify investments in systems that work.
To break this cycle, African leaders must adopt a citizen-first approach to governance. That means prioritizing investments in local health systems, setting up regional forensic labs, strengthening public hospitals, decentralizing healthcare services, and ensuring that rural and urban areas alike have access to basic medical care. It means investing in the training and retention of healthcare professionals and embracing policies that make quality healthcare affordable and accessible to all.
Ultimately, the measure of a government’s success is not in how many luxury cars its ministers drive or how many sports stadiums it builds, but in how well it takes care of its people by providing essential services and facilities. If the tragedy in Ghana teaches us anything, it should be that dignity in death — and quality in life — should not be a privilege for the few, but a right for all.
