Eleven years after fire, flood, and fuel combined to claim more than 150 lives and injure over 200 others, Ghana still gathers to mourn but not to conclude.

The question that has haunted survivors since 3 June 2015 remains painfully unchanged: where is justice?

This was not an ordinary tragedy. It was a catastrophic convergence of disaster and failure; lives lost, families wiped out, and hundreds left with permanent physical, emotional, and economic scars.

Some survivors lost their hearing. Others lost their livelihoods. Many lost entire families. Yet the most enduring loss has been institutional accountability.

In 2018, 69 victims took the courageous step of going to court, filing a class action against GOIL, the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), and the station manager. Their demand was simple: accountability, compensation, and dignity.

Over time, the evidence has only deepened the moral weight of their case. Under cross-examination, GOIL’s own witness reportedly admitted that the disaster could have been avoided. The NPA’s witness acknowledged that stronger regulatory oversight might have prevented the tragedy. These are not emotional claims, they are courtroom revelations.

And yet, the institutions at the centre of the storm continue to maintain a familiar defence: we did our work. They argue due diligence, procedural compliance, and external causality. But for the victims, such explanations ring hollow against the lived reality of irreversible loss.

The AMA’s position has been particularly contentious. Critics argue that the Assembly cannot distance itself from a city where blocked drains, illegal structures, and encroachments on waterways were visible and persistent. If enforcement agencies observe risk but fail to act decisively, then “not our responsibility” becomes less a defence and more an indictment.

This is why survivors describe June 3 not as an accident, but as a preventable failure of duty of care; a failure that unfolded in plain sight.

The victims’ renewed call, supported by the One Ghana Movement, is now also a call to the Presidency under the “Resetting Ghana” agenda. Their message is direct: reset must mean more than policy slogans. It must mean justice for victims, accountability for institutions, and relief for citizens who have suffered too long.

But 11 years on, the trial continues. The suffering continues. And the silence of resolution continues.

Ghana must now confront a difficult truth: a nation that remembers tragedy annually but refuses to conclude justice, risks turning remembrance into ritual and accountability into absence.

The question is no longer
whether June 3 happened. It is whether Ghana is prepared to finally answer it with justice that is more than ceremonial.