Many are the shocking developments I have heard about this government but none as shocking as a claim by Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central Isaac Adongo.
Hon Isaac Adongo, as I have come to know is not one to ignore when it comes to understanding the governance of President Akufo-Addo and the financial operations of his cousin Ken Ofori-Atta.
After all, he was the same person who told me in an interview that the biggest threat to Ghana's financial sector was the same cousin finance minister of the Nana Akufo-Addo led government.
Isaac Adongo at the time said Ken Ofori Atta needed to be watched else he would land Ghana in trouble.
About 4 years later, he was proven right when in an unprecedented move, over 80 New Patriotic Party Members of Parliament demanded the resignation or removal of Ken Ofori-Atta.
The NPP MPs had risen against 'their' Finance Minister after he had led a careful destruction of the economy and chosen to blame COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Sitting in the Metro TV studios on the Morning of 23 May 2023, Isaac Adongo said the Government of Ghana acting on behalf of the people of Ghana did not make a single payment to Independent Power Producers (IPP).
By the end of 2022, according to Isaac Adongo Ghana had accumulated a total debt of GH₵19billion to the IPPs.
As their name suggests, Independent Power Producers are private owners of power plants that generate the electricity that is sold to the Ghanaian.
By the structure in place, when these IPPs generate the power, it goes into a transmission system managed by theG hana Grid Company (GridCo) and onwards to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) and the Mines.
ECG, NEDCo sells the power to the end user in other words, we buy the power and pay them; yet for the year 2022, no payments were made to the IPPs, even though those of us who bought the power paid for it.
Question remains, what happened?
Where did the monies collected from the end users go?
This is despite the fact that by 1 September 2022, the cost of electricity was increased by 27.15%, to which the Ghanaian had no choice but to pay.
Why is government not paying for electricity which is getting expensive for the Ghanaian?
However, the development is not new to the power sector and traces of this behaviour can be seen in other sectors.
Do you remember Power Distribution Services (PDS)?
PDS, according to government fraudulently took over ECG and collected monies on behalf of the company for close to 6 months.
Guess what, instead of prosecutions and accountability, Ghanaians got silence as deafening as that of an accomplice to a crime.
Till today, whatever happened to the monies collected on behalf of the ECG remains an unresolved matter as far as the public was concerned while the alleged perpetrators of the fraud felt offended enough to sue government.
There are however deeper issues at play here which relates to criminal mismanagement.
This government is an NPP government formed from the membership of the NPP and led by their model NPP leader Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
From the year 2013 to 2016, the NPP was in opposition.
During that period, there was one issue that the NPP sold as evidence of the alleged 'incompetence' of the NDC administration; Dumsor.
Dumsor had become the term used to describe the aggravated power outages that instensified in 2014.
Even though the situation was not unique to the NDC administration, the NPP saw a good political opportunity as the outages, I must admit were infuriating and counterproductive.
Dumsor thus became a swansong of the NPP's campaign even though the situation has been effectively dealt with by mid-2016.
Thus when the NPP took over governance in 2017, it embarked on solving an imaginary problem rather than manage the solutions handed down by the NDC administration.
The NDC government had handed down solutions that covered generation, fuel and the financial.
The NPP goverment throught its first four years, testified to the resolution of the problem of generation when it talked of the energy having excess capacity.
The problem of fuel was to a large extent resolved with the operationalization of Atuabo Gas Treatment Plant while the Energy Sector Levies Act (ESLA) was the solution to the neck breaking debt accumulated in the energy sector.
Instead of building on these solutions to improve the efficiency of the power sector, the Nana Akufo-Addo led administration spent its time reminding Ghanaians of a resolved problem and claiming they are solving it.
Fast forward to 2023, electricity keeps getting expensive because it has already been increased twice barely halfway through the year.
The challenge is that even the expensive electricity is unavailable as more and more Ghanaians are either sleeping in darkness or being deprived of electricity they need to work.
To make matters worse, we are now finding out that none of monies collected in 2022 was paid to the IPPs?
How did this happen?
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