Waooo, what an interesting country, times and leadership our generation lives in. The Queen’s language has become a tool for deception, cover up for incompetence and falsehood and behind the veil, lies a mesh of entangled self-serving group of people, egocentrically woven together to loot and deplete the resources of this country with disdainful glee. The pains and agonies the majority of the citizenry go through mean nothing to them. Even where they are sincerely concerned about particular issues, they simply don’t have the solutions for them.
President Mahama has presided over electricity crisis afflicting this country for four continuous years with promises of addressing and ending them but all to no avail. In his address to the Parliament of Ghana, he told the world that he was not going to manage the crisis we find ourselves in as previous governments did and compounded it. He was very emphatic that he was going to FIX IT. ‘I John Dramani Mahama will fix the electricity problem by the end of the year’. Early this year, in his address to the same Parliament of the Republic, he told the world that he had fixed the problem.
When the problem reared its ugly heard again, after cries of high tariffs, he announced an offer of US$300 million to subsidize consumers of electricity. When debates of the subsidy took a high pitch, the subsidy metamorphosed into re-alignment. Indeed the wheels of the economy generally are not stable enough for the journey we have embarked upon as a people; the wheels are wobbling dangerously for the comfort of the passengers on board. Since the driver has squandered all the monies the passengers have paid to him, he is not in a position to buy new tires to replace the wobbling and dangerous ones, he drives to a wayside vulcanizer and asks that the tires be re-aligned.
When the tires under a Ford Expedition are solid, you don’t need any re-alignment, particularly when the vehicle is travelling all the way from Burkina Faso to Accra. The tires under the VRA, GRIDCO and ECG vehicles are all worn out and therefore moving dangerously on the highways of electricity generation. All we can hear from the President is re-alignment of the sector and blaming ‘terrorists’ for the short supply of crude and gas from neighbouring country.
Now some of the falsehood told the nation by President Mahama and his appointees on dumsor and electricity shortfalls.
September 4, 2012— I have directed an inter-ministerial committee chaired by the minister with immediate effect to ensure that your power supply are not unduly disrupted’. While we are assured that there would be resumption of supplies from WAGP in the next few weeks, we will redouble our efforts to make up the shortfalls ourselves by speeding up projects we have been working on—–, President Mahama.
October 4, 2012— Load shedding will soon be a thing of the past, Mahama Launch of NDC Manifesto. ‘In the second NDC administration, the issue of load shedding will be a thing of the past. It will never happen again.’
October 30, 2012—Dumsor, Act of God to end by Ist year of next term (2012 IEA Debate).
November 2, 2012—Off Peak Load shedding to end by November 15,–Joe Oteng Adjei, Minister of Energy at a Press Conference organized by the Ministry. ‘The full complement of the fuel required to fully integrate the system should be in the country by November 5, 2012’.
February 20, 2013—Load shedding will end mid-year, Mahama swearing in members of Council of State.
March 2013-‘Power crisis to end in June, consumers to pay more’— VRA presentation to Parliamentary select committee on energy.
April 8, 2013- Never Again Shall Ghana Experience Load Shedding. Off Peak Dumsor ended, Mahama assures nation. Government will ensure that never again shall we experience the load shedding in the coming years, President Mahama said this at the National Prayer and Thanksgiving Service at the Black Star Square, in Accra.
December 15, 2013 – Energy crisis is solved, Mahama at the inauguration of the Revival Restoration Centre of the Assemblies of God Church in Accra. ‘We had the energy crisis which was appropriately labelled the ‘apostle of dumsor, dumsor and Ghanaians in their usual humour, crafted very interesting greetings that said ‘Yema mo dumsor ooo, then the responds was ‘Yaa Mahama ooo.’ I told them I was working on the energy crisis and we will solve it and I said that when we did, they should remember to use the greeting Yema mo kania ooo, with the responds, Yaa Mahama oooo. However very often in Ghana we have a short memory’.
November 27, 2014,–I will reduce the impact of dumsor, Mahama on Good Evening Ghana. ‘President Mahama says he has learnt not to make any more promises on when the current power crises facing the country will end’.
November 27 2014, ‘Power crises Over In May — Energy Ministry assures nation, Jinapor tells Parliament when he represented his Minister to answer questions.
December 16, 2014, ‘I will end dumsor’, Kwabena Donkor at his vetting. December 31, 2014, ‘I will banish dumsor forever’, John Mahama , he went on, it will be one in which we will banish darkness from our land and put an end to dumsor forever’.
May 1, 2015— ‘Lack of money not cause of Dumsor’, President Mahama at May Day Celebrations. ‘Our present challenge is not because we don’t have money to buy crude oil as some people will want us to believe’. October 19, 2015 ‘If you want dumsor to end, then you will have to PAY HIGHER ELECTRICITY BILLS, John Mahama, speaking on Garden City Radio in the Ashanti Region, if we genuinely want reliable, sustainable power, then the prices will have to go up.
November 14, 2015—Dumsor will end before elections 2016’’, Mahama told supporters in Tamale.
This has been the state of this nation in as far as one critical commodity, electricity, very essential to the growth and development of the economic and social lives of this country is concerned. The President and his assigns have made various and varying promises in various places at varying occasions with varying degrees of confidence and passion for honesty or deception depending on who is speaking.
As I write, it is exactly seven months when electricity bills were astronomically increased in order that dumsor will end. Here we stand, back to dumsor which is not officially declared and therefore not dumsor, according to President Mahama. The various electricity generators and distributors are still seriously indebted to those who provide them with the raw materials for generation. Government is taxing consumers of electricity, the ECG is supposed to be billing at least at break-even point, why can’t we generate enough power?
When a government uses falsehood clothed in a relatively refined word as propaganda, it produces failures in the long run. Yes in the short term, the propaganda works particularly in a society with a huge percentage of illiterates and a certain level of literates who are ill and their only cure is monetary consideration, the victory of propaganda is assured. In the medium to the long term, propaganda is laid bare and the hidden lies and falsehoods are exposed. Mahama and the NDC have governed this nation with lies and blatant disrespect for the people of this country.
One of the tools is aligning and re-aligning various lies and falsehoods to hoodwink the nation and make those lies look true. As stated above, the wheels of governance are bad, we cannot change them because we have eaten the meat and shredded even the bones. We are broke as a nation, what we are doing is re-aligning one problem with another problem, trying to ameliorate one problem, by escalating another. That is Mahama’s re-alignment. It is now out because he has failed to fix a major problem as he has promised.
Now the policy is that re-align if you cannot fix the problem, that is Mahama’s philosophy. Can we trust Mahama with the fortunes of this country going forward? If Mahama cannot not solve a single problem of national interest in four years, then think about it.
Daavi, give me three tots of mahogany bitters to re-align my thoughts.
By Kwesi Biney