Dumsor Theatricals… Pythons, Missing Containers

What was it about the immediate past government that it was able to keep the lights on for eight years?

Even under the COVID-19 pandemic when economic challenges had befallen the global space, the lights still glowed in the country.

Energy issues are complex and require dexterity in managing them efficiently.

One of the last words of former President Akufo-Addo before exiting office was that should the man now leading this country return to the helm, the lights will go off. Although we are unable to say what informed such a remark, his prophecy has come to pass.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration started with tales about missing Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) containers from the ports, with John Jinapor leading the campaign.

We were fed with a story about the arrest of some Indians suspected to be behind the theft of the containers at the Port of Tema. Eventually, the story lost its limbs and was confined to the dustbin of formal lies by the government, and nothing was heard anymore about the so-called Indian container thieves.

The Energy Minister, John Jinapor, lost an opportunity to make a good first impression as a minister manning such a critical ministry. His posturing in the midst of the so-called lost ECG containers was not productive.

Here we are today with the country plunged into another session of blackouts and inconsistent stories about the reasons behind the anomaly.

Ghanaians, as they weather the challenges posed by the inconsistent power supply, are compelled to juxtapose what the situation was when the New Patriotic Party (NPP) ruled and today under the NDC.

Over a year into the NDC administration, one of the reasons being adduced by the ruling party's minders is that the NPP's poor management of the energy kitty is responsible for the darkness we have been plunged into.

The blame-game is unacceptable at this time because the NDC has been in charge long enough to have fixed the problem.

The motley reasons they are putting up, incoherent as they are, do not make sense and could be adduced to confusion triggered by the angst of Ghanaians over the persistent blackouts.

Pythons creating their nest in a substation and even laying eggs in there courted sympathy for the ECG engineers in a suburb of Kumasi; an interesting and humorous sideshow in the midst of a serious national issue. It did not however stop government from undertaking a so-called reshuffling of the Kumasi ECG setup.

We are told also that Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, aka Napo, employed some pro-NPP engineers who are sabotaging the NDC government by putting off the lights, especially in the Ashanti Region, another tale from the NDC propaganda workshop.

In a case of 'catching a scapegoat', an engineer who has barely two months to go on retirement has been 'sacked' to create a semblance of seriousness in tackling the anomaly.

John Jinapor told us that some pylons have not been replaced in the past two decades or so, and the President said some transformers are being replaced with Made-in-Ghana replacements.

Two generating units at Akosombo were destroyed by fire and the NDC claimed that was the handiwork of arsonists who are NPP persons.

We are faced with a more serious issue than the trivialities government is dangling before us.

The bottom-line is about money and the wherewithal to manage this complex sector without propaganda. What has become of the dumsor levy? We are faced with a dearth of truth of enormous dimension.