They left home that day, not knowing they were walking into history’s most painful page.
It was May 9, 2001. A rainy Wednesday.
A day Ghana was meant to enjoy football, but instead inherited grief — a day that should have celebrated passion, but instead swallowed dreams.
They came draped in the colours of hope. Rainbow took over the skyline. Red and white. Kotoko versus Hearts — the Super Clash. Some came wearing jerseys with names of heroes on their backs. Others clutched tickets like golden keys to 90 minutes of escape and joy.
But by nightfall, 126 of them would never return.
They had come for a match. They ended up as martyrs of negligence — victims of a system that promised them safety but failed to catch them when it mattered most.
The Accra Sports Stadium, that iconic concrete coliseum, turned into a corridor of death. In just minutes.
The tragedy unfolds
The match had everything a rivalry should: goals, drama, noise. Kotoko took the lead. Hearts equalised. Then took the lead. The crowd swelled with emotion — joy on one side, fury on the other.
And then it began.
Bottles flew. Seats shattered. Fans vented their frustrations.
The police responded, not with calm or caution — but with tear gas. Fired into a panicked crowd of over 40,000 people. The gates were locked. The exits sealed. The stampede began.
“I stepped on bodies. I saw people gasping, begging for air,” remembers Aziz Futah, a Hearts of Oak fan. “I’ve never healed from that night.”
Some suffocated. Some were crushed. Others trampled in a desperate bid to escape. The stadium roared — not with cheers—but with the final cries of the dying.
They were mostly young. Full of dreams. And full of life.
Gone.
Few witnessed the horror like Herbert Mensah, then-chairman of Asante Kotoko. His words have become the lasting voice of that tragedy — raw, broken, and unforgettable.
“I carried dead bodies,” he recounted years later, his voice cracking with memory. “I held someone’s child, lifeless in my arms. You can’t forget that. Ever.”
“The first call I made was to Otumfuo and he said, “Herbert be strong, people will need you.”
He ran from the VIP stand to the pitch that night. What he found wasn’t a pitch — it was carnage. It was death.
“I was there. I didn’t hear it. I saw it,” he’s often said. “You could feel the helplessness. You could taste the sorrow.”
And every year since, Herbert Mensah has walked with that pain. Long after the sirens faded, he kept the May 9 memory alive — laying wreaths, supporting victims’ families, weeping with them.
But even he, a man of immense resolve, has questioned Ghana’s response: “How do you have such a tragedy and not memorialise the names? How do you move on as if 126 lives didn’t matter?”
Behind the Number: 126 souls, 126 stories
14-year-old Kwame Mensah wasn’t even there to watch the game. He was selling sachet water to help his single mother. He died at the gate.
Kojo Adusei, a staunch Kotoko fan, had never missed a game that season. He had promised his daughter he’d bring home a souvenir if Kotoko won.
He never came back.
Behind each number was a story, a smile, a promise, a voice — silenced forever.
A nation in mourning, a system in denial
The days that followed were draped in black. Bodies were lined up at the 37 Military Hospital like lifeless cargo. Mothers wailed. Fathers collapsed. Siblings stared in disbelief.
President John Agyekum Kufuor declared three days of national mourning. A commission of inquiry was set up. Its report blamed poor policing, inadequate infrastructure, locked gates, and lack of emergency response.
But that was where it ended.
No convictions. No long-term reforms. No true justice.
“No one was jailed. No one took real responsibility,” says Nana Adu, who lost his cousin that night. “Every year we light candles. We pray. But nothing changes. It’s like they died twice – once at the stadium, and again in our silence.”
The statue and the silence
Today, a bronze statue stands outside the stadium. “I Am My Brother’s Keeper,” it says — depicting one fan carrying another. But that’s all there is.
Just silence.
“Something died in Ghana football that day,” some said. “The joy. The wild energy. It hasn’t been the same.”
The Accra Sports Stadium has since been renovated. But to many, it still feels like a graveyard.
The empty seats and the unkept promise
Every year on May 9, the Ghana Football Association, Ministry of Sports, and National Sports Authority lay wreaths. They observe a minute’s silence. Then they walk away.
Critics call it a ritual of convenience.
“This tragedy should be taught in schools,” says sports journalist Saddick Adams. “It should have reshaped how we manage crowds, police stadiums, and protect fans. But we’ve forgotten.”
Even now, violence haunts Ghana’s game. Just February this year, fan died at match venue involving now-defunct Nsoatreman FC and same Asante Kotoko that lost many fans 24 years ago.
A few days ago, fans were seen throwing punches at each other in a second-tier match between Attram De Visser and Hohoe United.
There was the incident in the stadium where a fan used helmet to break the head of an opposing fan. Blood oozed out like bagre dam spillage.
“We said ‘Never Again,’ but have we really meant it?” asks Joe Aggrey, who was Deputy Sports Minister in 2001.
A legacy of tears
For the families, the legacy of May 9 is not about football. It’s about absence. Empty chairs at dinner. Quiet birthdays. Unanswered prayers. Grief that never aged.
“They came to watch a football match,” says former GFA President Nyantakyi said in 2016. “They didn’t know it would be their last breath.”
Twenty-four years on, we remember their deaths. But have we truly honoured their lives?
They were sons, daughters, friends, parents.
They were Ghana’s heartbeat — silenced not by war, not by disease, but by a failure to care.
May 9 Should Never Be Just Another Date
Let it be a lesson. Let it be a mirror. Let it be a warning. As Nyantakyi put it nine years ago, “Commemorating the dead should be a warning to the living.”
Let May 9 not just be the day 126 died. Let it be the day Ghana chose to never look away again.
They came for a football match.
They never went home.
And in many ways, neither did we.
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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
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