President Nana Akufo-Addo is utterly out of touch with recent happenings in Ghana and his latest comment about the erratic nature of power supply in the country is evident. This is as clear as daylight.
The major issue confronting Ghanaians since the start of 2024 has been the unannounced power outages recorded across the country, locally called ‘dumsor’ that continue to threaten lives and properties. Already, many businesses are folding up, lives continue to be lost, and properties worth millions of cedis have been destroyed because of the worsening nature of the power crisis.
There are growing calls for the government to prevail upon the Electricity Company of Ghana to release a load management timetable to help the citizens to plan their lives effectively.
However, nothing has been done about it. Also, an ultimatum issued by the Public Utilities and Regulatory Commission (PURC) to the Electricity Company of Ghana to release a load shedding timetable has been disregarded with impunity. The power distributor has become so arrogant that it dared its regulator and ordinary Ghanaians to do what they want. The Electricity Company of Ghana has taken this path because of the tacit political support it continues to enjoy from the Minister for Energy, Dr Matthew Opoku-Prempeh and the Akufo-Addo government.
It’s apparent the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has been dodgy with the power crisis since 2023 when the situation started getting out of control. It first started with a denial by senior government officials, including the Minister for Energy, that the country was not facing yet another dumsor. But as though struck by the gods, it has now ended with a clear admission of the challenges Ghanaians have been talking about since January 2024. “I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to Ghanaians for their patience and understanding during recent temporary challenges with electricity supply across the country,” Akufo-Addo admitted during the May Day celebration in Accra on May 1, 2024. This belated admission is coming after several months of denials and repeated attacks on Ghanaians who dared to complain about the erratic power supply in the country.
The Ghanaian leader half-heartedly said that: “Over the period, the issues surrounding transformers and gas supply have been successfully resolved, resulting in sufficient improvement in power supply reliability. Indeed, over the past few days, we have witnessed stable electricity supply across the country, with no load-shedding reported anywhere yesterday.” His claim about the seemingly stability in power supply in the West African country is not supported by the facts. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. At the time Akufo-Addo made the false statement, hundreds of thousands of Ghanaians had no power for several days continuously and the few lucky ones had to rely on their generators to power their homes and offices. This is not a leader who is on top of issues in the country and in touch with the sufferings of his people.
But he was right on one thing only: “For the past seven years we have worked tirelessly to keep the lights on and I am confident that the unfortunate era of dumsor will not return.” The current power crisis makes it patently clear that when you politicise an endemic problem, it will return to consume you. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a man who rode to power on the back of the power challenges recorded between 2012 and 2016 under the regime of ex-President John Dramani Mahama. And despite the great investments made by Mahama to end the power crisis by increasing the country’s generation capacity, Akufo-Addo and his appointees are struggling to keep the lights on after telling Ghanaians that they have the men to do the work.
There is one explanation for the public reaction caused by Akufo-Addo’s comment on the dumsor situation in the country: Ghanaians have become radically impatient to get rid of this leader and a party that has repeatedly shown gross disrespect to the electorate. But I shudder to say that Ghanaians are not angry enough. If they were, this government would get its act together.
It’s obvious from happenings in Ghana that one cannot build a nation on the back of sheer dishonesty and hypocrisy. It is the ingratitude of Akufo-Addo and his appointees that will cost them the December 2024 Presidential and Parliamentary election.
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The author, A. Kwabena Brakopowers, is a private legal practitioner, journalist, development communication practitioner, and fact-checking consultant who has written extensively on political issues, information disorder, brand communication, and international politics. You can reach him at Brakomen@outlook.com
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