Gov’t to Spend $40B to Make Nima Look Like Dubai, Forgets It’s Still Nima

The government has unveiled plans to spend a modest $40 billion — yes, billion with a “b” — to transform Nima, Maamobi and nearby towns into a glistening urban paradise, complete with 45-storey skyscrapers, underground shopping arcades, one or two flying khebab vendors, a Wakanda outpost and something called “arboriculture,” which locals assume is either a disease or a new church denomination. This plan — part prophecy, part science fiction — aims to give Accra its very own Dubai, minus the oil, order, and regular electricity.

Project lead Dr Noskim Atidigah confirmed that the primary beneficiaries of this utopian transformation would be chiefs, MPs, police officers, firemen, and, somehow, journalists — a lineup that perfectly represents the average Nima household, provided that household lives in Parliament and only visits Nima for campaign photos – with only 10 per cent of the apartments left to be rented out. Ghanaians, long accustomed to megaprojects that turn into roundabouts and motivational billboards, simply nodded and resumed their daily rituals of side-eyeing every bulldozer.

Despite its jaw-dropping cost, the plan does not include provisions for changing the behavioural ecosystem that makes Nima, well... Nima. As one skeptical resident put it: “You can build skyscrapers, but if Auntie Adiza is still frying fish by the transformer, is it really Dubai? It’s still Nima.”

Meanwhile, the people who actually live in Nima will be relocated to a temporary structure the size of a shipping container and told to “trust the process.”