Demolition of 70-Year-Old Tindamba Primary School Unfortunate and Shocking, Says MP Charles Agbeve
The overnight demolition of Tindamba Primary School in Wa, a 70-year-old institution that served generations of children in the Upper West Region, has been described as “quite unfortunate” and deeply shocking by Charles Agbeve, Vice Chairman of Parliament’s Select Committee on Local Government and Rural Development.
The school was razed to make way for a government-sponsored 24-hour economy market project, leaving more than 200 pupils without classrooms and creating an urgent educational crisis in the community. The demolition was carried out overnight, giving residents and school administrators no opportunity to intervene or prepare alternative arrangements for the children.
“Let me tell you that it’s quite unfortunate. What happened is quite big news to us. I’m also shocked by it,” Agbeve said during an interview on Joy FM’s Newsnight programme on Thursday evening.
At the heart of the demolition lies a protracted land-ownership dispute that had generated several court cases over the years. Those cases were ultimately settled outside the judicial system, and the resolution pointed to the landowner as the decisive party with authority over the property. The decision to demolish a functioning school to accommodate a market development has raised serious questions about how competing claims over public-interest infrastructure are adjudicated in Ghana.
Agbeve placed significant blame on the Ghana Education Service and district authorities for failing to secure formal ownership of the school’s land. “I believe that if the Ghana Education Service, through the district, had owned that school land, we would not have gotten here,” he said, a statement that points to a broader systemic failure in how educational institutions protect their physical assets.
The demolition of Tindamba Primary School is not an isolated incident but rather a symptom of a deeper infrastructure crisis afflicting Ghana’s education sector. Across the country, schools operate on land to which they have no formal title, leaving them vulnerable to exactly the kind of overnight destruction that unfolded in Wa. The problem is particularly acute in the northern regions, where communal land-ownership traditions and informal arrangements create an environment of perpetual uncertainty.
The incident also comes at a time when the education system is already under enormous strain. Ghana needs between 50,000 and 90,000 additional teachers but can only recruit 7,000 this year due to budgetary constraints. Schools in rural and peri-urban areas, like the now-destroyed Tindamba Primary, have long been at the sharp end of these shortages, operating with inadequate staff, crumbling facilities, and minimal government investment.
Agbeve urged the Ghana Education Service to move swiftly to formally acquire and register the land on which schools across the country sit, a measure he argued could prevent similar demolitions in the future. “If we do not secure these lands through proper legal channels, we will continue to see schools disappear overnight,” he warned.
The 24-hour economy market project that replaced the school is part of a broader government push to stimulate economic activity in regional capitals. However, the decision to prioritise commercial development over a functioning educational institution has drawn criticism from education advocates who argue that the two objectives need not be mutually exclusive. Critics have questioned why the market could not have been sited on alternative land rather than on the grounds of a school that had served the community for seven decades.
For the 200-plus pupils who arrived to find their school reduced to rubble, the immediate question is where they will learn. District education officials have been tasked with identifying temporary learning spaces, but no concrete plan has been announced. In the meantime, the children of Tindamba join a growing list of Ghanaian students whose education has been disrupted not by natural disaster or conflict, but by the decisions of adults entrusted with safeguarding their future.
Image Source: MYJOYONLINE
