For seven decades, the red-brick walls of Tindamba Primary School sheltered more than classrooms.
They nurtured generations of children from Sokpayiri, Kabenya and Wa Zongo, including Justice Yonny Kulendi, the first person from the Upper West Region since 1876 to rise to Ghana’s Supreme Court.
The founders who laid the school’s first blocks would likely never have imagined its end. Yet at about 2 a.m. on Saturday, while more than 200,000 residents of Wa slept, bulldozers moved in under the cover of darkness.
By daybreak, the school had been reduced to rubble. Scavengers sifted through the debris where a 70-year legacy once stood.
The controversy began after government’s 24-hour economy market policy directed Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies to identify sites for new markets.
The Wa Municipal Assembly, in collaboration with certain traditional authorities, selected the land for the Tindamba Primary School project.
The proposal sparked fierce opposition. During an official visit to Wa in January, the Minister for Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, Ahmed Ibrahim, openly opposed plans to demolish the school to make way for a market.
A dispute soon emerged between the landowners of Tindamba and proponents of the project.
The disagreement triggered a series of press conferences and counter-press conferences before ending up at the Wa High Court.
However, the case was withdrawn and later settled out of court through the intervention of the Waala Overlord, clearing the path for construction to begin.
Education, it appears, has been sacrificed for commerce.
The demolition has displaced 214 pupils, who have been moved to renovated classrooms at Nuriya English and Arabic School and Tindamba Junior High School.
Two streams have been merged into one, while two headteachers now share a single office.
A JoyNews visit found conditions at the temporary location far from ideal.
Toilets are overgrown with weeds, urinals are filthy, and pupils struggle to access decent sanitation facilities.
Enrollment has plunged from more than 400 pupils to just 214 as some parents withdraw their children.
For many residents, the loss goes beyond buildings and classrooms. Tindamba Primary was a community institution with its own identity and history.
Its pupils may have been relocated, but residents are left asking a painful question: who will restore the 70 years of learning that were bulldozed in the dead of night?
