NDC NEVER SOLVED DUMSOR BEFORE LEAVING OFFICE

NDC NEVER SOLVED DUMSOR BEFORE LEAVING OFFICE

Iddi Muhayu-Deen writes...

With the preponderance of evidence and undisputed reality, the Ghanaian people are increasingly coming to the realization that the NDC lied to us about the state of our debilitating energy crisis in the runup to the December polls. They lied to us when they said they had resolved the dumsor crisis. They lied to us when they said we wouldn't experience dumsor again, at least, not in the foreseeable future because they had found a permanent solution to this agelong crisis. They lied to us when they said dumsor was over.

They lied, lied and lied to us, and as if they haven't hurt our feelings enough, they continue to lie to us even in the face of the undisputed reality on the ground. So I ask, when would these people stop lying to us? They lied to us when they were in government, we decided to send them to opposition and they are still lying to us even in opposition. How I wish we could follow them to opposition and still vote against them in order to completely retire them from politics. They have absolutely no business in our body politics.

I don't know about you, but I never believed them when they said they had resolved dumsor. You know why? No one resolves a crisis with an emergency solution. You don't resolve dumsor with emergency power plants. Emergency is emergency and anything emergency is tentative and temporal, except if my dictionary is deceiving me in respect of the meaning of emergency. Or maybe, words have different meanings in the NDC's lexicon.

Even with the NDC's solution, if I tell you how much it is costing you and I (the poor taxpayers), you would not only get angry but also, crazy. Maybe I should just simplify it so that my grandma in Volta north can also appreciate. For every emergency power plant the NDC bought (including the infamous Ameris and Karpowers), multiply the cost of that plant by 4, and you would get how much the Ghanaian taxpayer was robbed. The cost of each power plant procured by the NDC was inflated by some 500%, making same the most expensive in the World, experts say.

Some experts in the industry also contend that, even if those plants were made of gold, they wouldn't cost that much. The most annoying thing is that we do not even have fuel to power these plants. They also left behind a broken economy. Like a friend of mine said, you don't solve a transportation problem by buying a vehicle you cannot fuel. No wonder we are back to square one. After this monumental disservice to country, the NDC also left behind a whopping US$2.4 billion debt in the energy sector alone, an amount that is even bigger than the net worth of a number of African countries.

And what are they saying now? The NDC now tells us to blame the Nana Addo government for the current energy conundrum. They say, we should blame a government that is yet to rollout any policy in the energy sector. They say, we should blame a government that is yet to present its first budget, where critical policy directions in the energy sector would be announced.

In other words, the NDC is essentially telling us to blame a government that is yet to be fully constituted for a crisis we have been through for four years. They are telling us to blame a government that is less than two months old in office, for not resolving a crisis that they (the NDC) couldn’t resolve in four years. Even my younger sister in Primary 6 would laugh at this bunkum and balderdash. Not even the marines would accept this onaapo story.

Before I conclude, I have one request to make of the Energy Minister, in whom, I have so much confidence because of his manifest competency. If he doesn’t want Ghanaians to be angry with him and the NPP government, then he shouldn’t give any timelines of ending dumsor in view of the enormity of the challenge confronting us. He should remember that the first fool, they say, is not a fool but the second and the third. I salute Hon. Kwabena Donkor. The Energy Minister should just tell Ghanaians what the reality is and we would adjust and live with it. Disappointment is the last thing the Ghanaian people would tolerate under these circumstances.

Fortunately, he [Hon. Boakye Agyarko] speaks so eloquently and impeccably. I therefore expect him to find suitable words to resist the temptations to provide such ‘headline answers’ even when the likes of Shamima Muslim, Richard Sky, Kwame Sefa Kayi, Gyifa Bampo, Bernard Avle and Evans Mensah push him to the wall. Journalist would always want to elicit certain specific responses from politicians, from which, they can make their headline and sensational stories. Maybe I am talking too much. Maybe not; but let me end it here. Like they always say, a word to the wise, is enough. The thoughts of a citizen not a spectator. 

 

Assalamu alaikum

Iddi Muhayu-Deen

#ForGodAndCountry