John Jinapor
The goings on in the country now are part of the plot by certain people obsessed with usurping political power by all means.
Buoyed by their partners in the media, these personalities in the opposition NDC, academia and civil society use their voices to paint the picture of gloom and doom for Ghana. The NDC in particular, would always counter every policy of the government as anti-people and responsible for the difficulties in the country.
The NDC thinks the ongoing African Games is “an organised waste of time and money” although the tournament has helped to market Ghana very well on the entire African continent and beyond. Besides the sports facilities that the government has built, the Games have provided an avenue for the people to enjoy their sports while traders are also selling their wares, thus boosting the local economy of the stadia’s neighbourhoods.
There are politicians who believe that the best way to win power is to undermine the credibility of their opponents. These elements are not interested in presenting any policy alternatives to the electorate to make informed decisions.
The challenges of our times and the impossibilities are the issues they preach every day to create the impression that the NPP government is a failure. It is for this reason that the NDC and its leaders have over the years since they exited power to be screaming “dumsor” is back as if as a people we have not learnt any lessons from almost five years of dumsor during the tenure of John Mahama.
Ghanaians have a phobia for dumsor because of the social, economic and psychological stress it caused us all during the period of the reign of John Mahama, for which the electorate embarrassed him at the polls in 2016.
Although John Mahama believes Ghanaians have short memories, the NDC thinks the people would not forget the era of dumsor and the only way to achieve their electoral agenda is to create the impression that “dumsor” is back. Thus normal outages, sometimes caused by technical challenges and routine maintenance by the power providers, are signs of a return to dumsor.
As a result, every power outage that occurs must be described as dumsor, even after the power distributor, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has explained to its customers that the intermittent blackouts are not a reflection of the return to dumsor.
The naysayers, including John Jinapor, the NDC’s Spokesperson on Energy would not accept the explanation by the ECG that it is working on changing its overloaded transformers and until the Company was done, its customers have to endure the outages.
Since this explanation does not sit well with the agenda of the NDC, it is forcing a non-existent dumsor on the people and has taken the narratives to another level of demanding a timetable from ECG. The ECG has made it clear that since the outages have not been planned, it would be difficult to come out with a timetable.
While the company struggles to fix the challenges, there are reports of damage being caused to high tension poles and cables while transformers are being stolen. The security agencies must bring such nation wreckers to book. If they have paymasters who have hired them for their parochial interests, the security agencies must smoke them out to pay the price as enemies of the state.
Too many prophets of doom have emerged on the national stage ready to sacrifice our collective objective for political power. These elements want a failed state situation for their political campaigns because the alternative of a great transformation agenda and a 24-hour economy are empty rhetoric.
Meanwhile, the ugly noise levels by the NDC about dumsor appear to have reached a crescendo forcing the regulator, the Public Utilities and Regulatory Commission (PURC) to acquiesce to the politics of dumsor.
If the PURC is operating truly as an independent regulator, it would not be issuing directives to the ECG to publish a timetable just to play to the gallery.
The generation, distribution and supply of power are not issues for the political arena. These are purely technical issues that must not be left to the conjecture of people like John Jinapor, who take delight in standing in the market place to shout fire in order to cause confusion.