Along the Pokuase-Amasaman-Nsawam stretch of the Accra-Kumasi Highway, a national infrastructure ambition has collided, for four years running, with the lived reality of the people whose houses, shops, hotels and livelihoods sat in the path of the bulldozer. The question landlords, tenants and traders keep asking is not whether the road will come it is already coming, lane by lane but who compensates them, how much, and when the wound finally closes.

A project born in 2022, still unhealed in 2026

Work on the 33.4-kilometre Ofankor-Nsawam dual carriageway, part of the wider Pokuase-Amasaman-Nsawam expansion of National Route Six, began in July 2022 with an original completion date of July 2024. That date came and went. So did a revised May 2025 deadline, then a further push to June and then July 2026. As of late May 2026, the contractor, Maripoma Enterprise Limited, was again seeking an extension, with residents in Amasaman, Sapeiman, Sasaam, Hebron, Medie and Dobro still enduring potholed, dusty, congested roadways years after demolition crews first moved in.

The October 2022 demolition exercise at Pokuase and Amasaman was the moment the human cost became impossible to ignore. Hundreds of landlords and residents in the Ga West Municipality were rendered homeless in a single operation, many claiming they were given barely a week’s notice a claim the Assembly denied. Occupants said they had no prior eviction notice and no compensation in hand before their walls came down.

The compensation math that keeps stalling the road itself

The compensation question is not incidental to the delays it is the delay. By March 2025, project officials were telling the Roads Minister directly that unresolved compensation was the single biggest obstacle to progress, with the planned three-tier interchange at Amasaman unable to proceed because the contractor still had no legal access to the land.

By May 2025, the numbers were laid bare before Parliament’s roads committee: of 328 structures sitting on the project’s right of way, only 76 owners qualified for compensation under the valuation exercise, and of those, just 40 had actually received payment. That imbalance hundreds of demolished or threatened structures against a fraction formally recognized for compensation is at the heart of why more than 100 court cases have piled up against the project, filed by owners disputing valuations, ownership boundaries, or exclusion from the compensation list altogether. Government has periodically stepped in to unlock the funding logjam.

In September 2025, President John Mahama announced that all pre-2025 arrears owed to the contractor had been cleared, folding the project into the administration’s “Big Push” infrastructure initiative, backed by GHS14 billion allocated for the year and a further GHS30 billion projected for 2026. By December 2025, the President cited over $70 million paid to the contractor and expressed hope the road could be finished by April 2026. Neither date held.

Houses, stores, hotels and the businesses still waiting

The structures caught in the right-of-way were never just residential. Hotels, chamber-and-hall lettings, mechanic shops and roadside stores along the Pokuase-Amasaman-Sapeiman-Medie axis have all featured in the demolition and compensation disputes, and drivers plying the route have openly complained that the state of the road itself is now generating business for the roadside mechanic shops that survived an ironic, unwanted silver lining born of the very disruption the project was meant to end.

So, when does the pain end?
On the government’s own most recent public timeline, the Pobiman flyover was expected to open by the end of June 2026 and the Medie flyover by the end of July 2026, with construction on the Nsawam bypass interchange contingent on compensation disputes there being resolved first.

That conditionality is the honest answer to the question landlords keep asking: the pain does not end on a fixed calendar date it ends when three things converge, and not before:

The remaining compensation backlog is cleared not just the 40 of 76 already paid, but the wider universe of the 328 affected structures whose claims remain disputed or unrecognized in the valuation exercise.

The outstanding court cases are resolved or withdrawn, since litigation over ownership and valuation continues to block the contractor’s legal access to sections of the right-of-way, particularly at Amasaman and the Nsawam bypass.

The contractor is paid promptly and consistently enough to sustain momentum, given that non-payment to Maripoma Enterprise Limited has itself been cited by two successive administrations as a direct cause of stalled work.

Until those three conditions are met simultaneously, further slippage beyond the current July 2026 target should be treated as the likely outcome rather than the exception a pattern this project has now repeated four times since 2022.

For the displaced landlords, tenants and shop and hotel owners of Pokuase, Amasaman, Sapeiman, Medie and the Nsawam corridor, the honest reporting obligation is this: compensation is being paid, but selectively and slowly, against a far larger pool of claimants than the valuation process has so far recognized. Government’s own figures 76 qualified out of 328 affected structures are themselves the clearest evidence that the compensation framework, not merely its funding, needs re-examination if the human cost of this road is ever to be fully accounted for.

This column will continue to track compensation disbursements, court outcomes and the interchange construction timelines at Amasaman and Nsawam as they develop.

Mustapha Bature Sallama.
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal investigation and Intelligence Analysis.

International Conflict Management and Peace Building.USIP

[email protected]
+233-555-275-880
Sources / References
GBC Ghana Online, “Near chaos at Pokuase-Amasaman … as landlords protest demolition of buildings without compensation,” October 24, 2022. https://www.gbcghanaonline.com/general/pokuase/2022/

Republic Online, “Landlords protest building demolition in Pokuase-Amasaman,” October 25, 2022. https://myrepubliconline.com/landlords-protest-building-demolition-in-pokuase-amasaman/

Ghana News Agency, “Ofankor-Nsawam Road: Compensation will be paid soon— Roads Minister,” August 14, 2022. https://gna.org.gh/2022/08/ofankor-nsawam-road-compensation-will-be-paid-soon-roads-minister/

Ghana News Agency, “Compensation, others impeding work progress on Ofankor-Nsawam road Project Manager,” March 5, 2025. https://gna.org.gh/2025/03/compensation-others-impeding-work-progress-on-ofankor-nsawam-road-project-manager/

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3news.com,

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Graphic Online, “If I look at progress being made on Ofankor-Nsawam road, I’m sure by April 2026 contractor can finish President Mahama,” December 3, 2025. https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/if-i-look-at-progress-being-made-on-pokuase-nsawam-road-im-sure-by-april-2026-contractor-can-finish-president-mahama.html

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AllAfrica, “Ghana: Ofankor-Nsawam Road Project Faces Fresh Delay · Contractor Seeks Second Extension · Commuters Lament Worsening Conditions,” May 25, 2026. https://allafrica.com/stories/202605250372.html

Ga West Municipal Assembly, “Pokuase road project to be extended.” https://gwma.gov.gh/pokuase-road-project-to-be-extended/