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This did not happen in a military regime. It is Ghana under the Fourth Republic. The date is Wednesday, June 16, 2014. The time is exactly 18:24 GMT. The location is in front of the main taxi rank in Tamale, in front of the Zenith Bank.

The taxi drivers here have resorted to blocking that section of the main road in the Northern Regional Capital. At about 16:30, the soldiers went and deflated the tyres of the taxi drivers who had blocked the road as their punishment. They managed to get spare tyres and left.

When the soldiers returned about two hours later, a new set of drivers had blocked the road. Some of them received slaps, I am told. The recalcitrant drivers were put into groups of three and ordered to hop up and down the street like frogs.

For some residents of Tamale, it was a spectacle to behold.

“People here don’t fear the police,” a resident told me. “It serves them right.”

The taxi drivers have become a nuisance to road users in the central business district of Tamale and despite the crude way of dealing with the situation, some residents are happy.

The question is whether this will end the impunity among the taxi drivers or they will return to block the streets after the “sons of men” return to the Kamina Barracks, where the solders were suspected to have come from.