An examination of court records, police comments, media archives and recent academic research suggests a clear central claim: some Uber, Bolt and Yango drivers avoid parts of the Teshie-Nungua corridor at night because repeated violent incidents have made the area feel risky. Those robberies, assaults, vehicle thefts and at least one documented killing have shaped that perception and now affect residents’ mobility.
For some residents of Teshie and Nungua, the difficult part of getting home at night is not finding a ride-hailing app. It is finding a driver willing to complete the journey.
A driver accepts the request. A phone call follows. The destination is confirmed. Then the trip disappears.
Stories of Uber, Bolt and Yango drivers declining journeys into parts of Teshie and Nungua have circulated in Accra for years. Read alongside court records, police comments and documented attacks on commercial and ride-hailing drivers, those stories point to a pattern stronger than neighbourhood reputation alone.
There is no credible evidence establishing that every part of Teshie or Nungua is unusually dangerous, nor is there a public crime dataset that allows the two communities to be ranked against every other Accra neighbourhood. What does exist is a documented sequence of violent incidents involving drivers, concentrated particularly around Teshie, and reporting going back several years, showing that drivers have responded by limiting or refusing service.
That distinction matters. This is not an argument that Teshie and Nungua should be treated as no-go areas. It examines how repeated incidents can create a perception of risk strong enough to alter how a transport market works.
A late-night Bolt trip and a route through Teshie
One of the clearest cases began shortly after 11 p.m. on November 29, 2020.
According to court proceedings, Bolt driver Kester Anderson received a request to pick up two passengers at Teshie Agblezaa and take them to Salem Square. The passengers instructed him to travel along the LEKMA Hospital Road, through Teshie Mobil and Lascala.
At Salem Square, prosecutors said, one passenger smeared powdered pepper into Anderson’s face while the other took his mobile phone.
The case did not end as an unresolved allegation. The two men were eventually convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison each. Court reporting identified both as residents of Teshie Maami. Investigators used Bolt trip information to help identify the people involved. Source: Graphic Online
The geography deserves careful treatment. Teshie Maami was where the convicted men were reported to live; the attack itself occurred after a trip from Agblezaa through the LEKMA-Teshie Mobil corridor to Salem Square. It would therefore be inaccurate to place the attack at Teshie Maami simply because the offenders lived there.
That distinction matters. It also sets up the next case, where the consequences were far more serious.
Then a driver was killed.
Less than a year later, the consequences were far more serious.
On October 8, 2021, 30-year-old commercial driver Kwame Osei Banahene was found shot dead at Greda Estate in Teshie. The Toyota Vitz he was operating had been taken.
The then Teshie District Police Commander, DSP Ransford Nsiah, confirmed that Banahene had been found with gunshot wounds to the head. Police were also investigating information that the stolen vehicle’s registration plate had been removed and replaced. Source: MyJoyOnline
Available reporting describes Banahene as a taxi driver rather than conclusively establishing that he was completing an Uber or Bolt trip when he was killed. That does not make the case irrelevant to ride-hailing drivers. It places a violent car-snatching homicide involving a working driver inside the same transport environment in which app drivers operate.
The killing later became part of media reporting about why drivers were becoming reluctant to enter the area. It also helped establish the wider pattern that followed, which became clearer in 2022.
By 2022, the avoidance was being reported openly.
In August 2022, MyNewsGH reported that some Uber and Bolt drivers were effectively blocking parts of Teshie and Nungua because of robbery and car-snatching concerns.
The report claimed that more than 15 SOS alerts involving incidents in the area had circulated over several months. That number has not been independently verified through a published police dataset, so it should not be treated as an official crime statistic.
The more consequential part of the report was what residents said was happening to their transportation.
Some residents told the publication that they were walking longer distances to reach trotro services because ride-hailing drivers would decline requests once they realized the pickup was inside Teshie. One resident claimed even some conventional taxi drivers were cautious about unfamiliar passengers. Source: MyNewsGH
That is the point at which a security concern becomes something larger. It becomes a mobility problem, and the court cases that followed help explain why.
The court cases continued.
Just days after that 2022 report, a court case provided another concrete example.
A Bolt driver arrived at Teshie Gonno School after receiving a request. According to the prosecution, a man approached the vehicle claiming to be the passenger who had ordered the ride, entered the front seat and then forcibly took the driver’s iPhone.
The driver and another person chased and apprehended him. Police said scissors were found concealed in his clothing. He pleaded guilty to robbery and received a 10-year prison sentence. Source: Ghana News Agency
Then, in January 2023, an Uber driver received a trip request at about 1:20 a.m. from Mannet Junction to Teshie Market.
Ghana News Agency reported that the driver was later involved in an alleged robbery that resulted in a 20-year-old fisherman being remanded by an Accra Circuit Court. Because that case was reported at the remand stage, the allegations should not be presented as a conviction. Source: Ghana News Agency
The distinction between conviction, prosecution evidence and allegation is crucial when looking at a collection of cases like this. Not every arrest proves guilt, and not every report establishes that a community is broadly unsafe. The central claim is narrower: repeated cases have shaped driver reluctance in parts of the Teshie area.
What the cases do establish is that ride-hailing drivers have repeatedly appeared as victims in criminal proceedings connected to the Teshie area. The next case made that pattern more severe.
2025 produced one of the most violent cases
On January 7, 2025, a Bolt driver accepted a request to transport two passengers from Labadi to a residence at Teshie Malik.
The court later heard that, after reaching the house, the driver was asked to wait while the passengers collected belongings for another trip. Instead, one passenger pulled a knife and attacked him. The victim sustained injuries to his neck, hands, arm and head as his attackers tried to take his Toyota Corolla. The case later resulted in convictions and prison sentences. Source: MyJoyOnline
Unlike the earlier remand cases, this one proceeded to sentencing. It is therefore among the strongest evidence supporting drivers’ fear of becoming vulnerable after dropping passengers off in residential areas. The risk is structural.
A ride-hailing driver works alone, carries a smartphone, has immediate control of a valuable vehicle and is expected to follow the directions of strangers into places they may not know. That risk helps explain why the next allegation mattered so much and why it followed soon after the earlier cases.
Teshie Mobil and LEKMA surfaced again.
Another alleged attack occurred early on August 11, 2025.
Prosecutors told an Accra Circuit Court that two passengers ordered a Yango ride from Teshie Mobil toward the LEKMA Hospital area at about 5 a.m. Near the destination, one passenger allegedly took the driver’s phone and GH¢1,500. A struggle followed, and residents eventually detained the suspects before police intervened.
The case came before court in February 2026. Both defendants pleaded not guilty and were granted bail, so the allegations remain unproven unless and until the court determines otherwise. Source: Ghana News Agency
Again, the significance is not that this single allegation proves Teshie Mobil is a crime hotspot. It is that the same names and routes recur in the documentary record: Teshie Mobil, LEKMA, Agblezaa, Teshie Market, Malik and the wider Teshie corridor. That recurrence leads naturally into the Nungua record.
Nungua has a related history, but the evidence is not identical.
The case for Teshie is substantially stronger than the documentary evidence currently available for Nungua specifically. That needs to be said plainly.
One relevant case dates to 2020, when prosecutors said two men went to Nungua Brigade, hired a taxi driver operating a Toyota Vitz and allegedly planned to steal the vehicle after asking him to take them toward Lashibi. Source: MyJoyOnline
It was a conventional taxi case, not an app booking.
Nungua nevertheless appears repeatedly alongside Teshie in driver discussions and the 2022 reporting about destination avoidance. That brings the discussion to the limits of the available evidence and sets up the next point, which makes that limit explicit.
There is a difference between a place mentioned in reporting and a location with enough incident data to establish an elevated crime rate. Ghana does not currently publish the granular incident-level ride-hailing crime statistics needed to make that calculation. That gap helps explain the next public acknowledgement.
The police eventually acknowledged the reputation problem, after the limits of the available evidence became clear.
Perhaps the most striking public acknowledgement came not from a driver association but from the local police.
In October 2025, Teshie District Police Commander Chief Superintendent Vincent Adotey publicly complained that ride-hailing drivers were reluctant to enter Teshie because of phone snatching. He said his command was receiving cases of phone theft from ride-hailing drivers. Source: GHNow
Adotey made other highly controversial claims during the same remarks, including an unsupported personal estimate about drug use in the community. That estimate was criticized publicly and should not be repeated as a reliable statistic.
His specific acknowledgement that police were receiving cases involving ride-hailing drivers, however, is relevant because it reinforces what drivers and residents had already been telling reporters. By then, the reputation was no longer just an online discussion.
Academic research shows the behaviour is not unique to Teshie.
Research on Ghana’s broader ride-hailing economy shows drivers tend to avoid neighbourhoods they perceive as dangerous.
A 2026 study published in Discover Global Society interviewed 23 female ride-hailing drivers in Accra and Kumasi. Nineteen of them, or 83 percent, reported avoiding night driving or particular neighbourhoods because of safety concerns.
The researchers found that these decisions reduced exposure to perceived danger but also reduced drivers’ earning opportunities. Participants cited robbery, assault, vehicle theft, unfamiliar locations and late-night driving in areas with limited traffic or police presence among their concerns. Source: Springer / Discover Global Society
The study is qualitative and involves only female drivers, so the 83 percent figure should not be extrapolated to all Ghanaian ride-hailing drivers.
A separate 2026 academic study analyzed 24 Ghanaian media reports published between 2016 and 2024 about ride-hailing driver safety. Robbery was the most frequently reported threat, with some reported incidents involving physical attacks and fatalities. Researchers also identified theft, road accidents, physical harm and kidnapping-related cases within the broader national record. Source: ScienceDirect
That study is equally careful about its own limits. It describes the findings as preliminary because it analyses media reports rather than a comprehensive police crime database. Those limitations are important. They also underline how badly Ghana needs better data.
Residents pay the hidden cost.
When drivers avoid a neighbourhood, the impact goes beyond an individual safety decision—it can change how everyone who lives there gets around.
A resident returning from work at 11 p.m. may face repeated cancellations. A health worker finishing a late shift may need to walk to a busier, more visible road before requesting another ride. A parent travelling with children may have to ask a driver to complete the final part of the trip. Someone arriving from the airport may find a ride cancelled once they share their destination.
These effects can be especially difficult when conventional public transport becomes less predictable. Reporting from Teshie in 2022 already described residents walking farther to find trotros when ride-hailing vehicles would not enter the neighbourhood.
In this way, crime can create a geographic surcharge, even when no company officially imposes one. Residents pay through extra time, uncertainty, additional walking, higher negotiated fares, and reduced access, especially at the very hours when door-to-door transport is most valuable.
A recent killing has intensified the conversation.
The issue has returned to public attention following the death of Circle-based phone dealer Nana Yaw Kyere, also known as Terry or Dinero.
Kyere was reported missing after travelling to Teshie for a business transaction in September 2026. His family subsequently confirmed that he had been found dead. At the time of writing, the circumstances remain under investigation, and the Ghana Police Service has not publicly established a final account of what happened. Source: Metro TV Online
Kyere was not a ride-hailing driver, and his death should not be folded into ride-hailing crime statistics. Its relevance is different.
The case has revived the broader discussion about personal security in Teshie, including the risks faced by people travelling to unfamiliar locations to meet people first contacted through digital platforms.
Using his killing as proof that Teshie is inherently unsafe would go beyond the evidence. Ignoring how such cases deepen an already existing reputation problem would be equally unrealistic.
What should happen next?
The worst response would be to accept the idea that people should avoid Teshie and Nungua.
These are large, vibrant communities, with homes, schools, health facilities, shops, and thousands of residents who deserve to move around safely, regardless of whether a driver feels a neighbourhood’s name is worth the risk.
A better response calls for cooperation among the Ghana Police Service, ride-hailing companies, and local authorities. Platforms can strengthen rider verification, especially for newly created accounts and high-risk late-night bookings. They can also improve emergency response so that pressing a safety button leads to meaningful help, rather than a support ticket after an incident has already occurred.
Police can use incident reports to identify the locations and times when targeted patrols could have the greatest impact. Local authorities can improve lighting and create clearly marked pickup areas around major night-time transport hubs. Most importantly, police and platforms should start sharing anonymized safety data.
For now, public discussion relies largely on court reports, news stories, driver WhatsApp alerts, and personal accounts. Without reliable neighbourhood-level data, residents risk unfair stigmatization, while drivers lack the information to distinguish real hotspots from reputation alone.
Teshie and Nungua don’t need another viral label. They need enough evidence, enforcement, and practical safety measures to make that label unnecessary.
When repeated crime affects where drivers are willing to go, security is no longer just a policing issue. It becomes part of the city’s transport system.
