The Minority Caucus in Parliament has blamed the government for the ongoing power crisis, insisting that the situation predates the recent incident at Akosombo and reflects deeper systemic failures.
Addressing a press conference in Parliament, the Member of Parliament for Afigya Kwabre North, Hon. Collins Adomako Mensah who also doubles as the Deputy Ranking Member of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Energy dismissed attempts by the Minister for Energy and Green Transition, John Abdulai Jinapor, to attribute the crisis to a single event.
“We all know what is happening in the country with the gas power sector,” he stated. “What millions of Ghanaians have been enduring since January 25 was not caused by any accident at Akosombo.It was caused by this government.”
According to him, the events of April 23, 2026, are merely “the latest and most dramatic symptom of a power sector left to decay under the NDC’s incompetent stewardship,” warning that the Mahama administration must not be allowed to use the incident as “a convenient alibi for a crisis that predates it by more than a year.”
He insisted the Minority would resist any attempt to “rewrite history,” stressing that long before the Akosombo incident, Ghanaians across the country were already grappling with persistent and unannounced power outages.
“ECG had been issuing relentless emergency and maintenance schedules throughout April 2026,” the he noted. “The Director-General had already publicly apologized for chronic power fluctuations that were damaging household appliances and crippling small businesses.”
The Afigya Kwabre North lawmaker, painted a grim picture of conditions prior to the incident, highlighting prolonged blackouts lasting days, industries suffering heavy losses, hospitals relying heavily on generators, and widespread disruption to daily life.
“That was the reality of Ghana’s power sector before any incident at Akosombo. That is the crisis this government owns fully, entirely, and without excuse,” Hon. Adomako Mensah emphasized.
He further recalled that on April 19, 2026 four days before the Akosombo incident President John Mahama had assured Ghanaians that the outages were not “dumsor,” but rather necessary measures to stabilize power supply.
“The Ghanaian people did not believe him then. They do not believe him now,” the statement said, accusing the government of attempting to shield its “own incompetence behind the narrative of a single incident.”
Directly addressing the President, Mr. Adomako argued that the ongoing outages are the result of “14 months of policy failure, institutional neglect, and the deliberate abandonment of the energy sector recovery framework.”
He pointed to the Energy Sector Recovery Programme (ESRP), introduced under the previous administration of former President Nana Akufo-Addo and former Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, describing it as a comprehensive, internationally backed plan designed to stabilize the sector.
“They did not leave behind a broken sector without solutions,” the statement noted. “They left behind the Energy Sector Recovery Programme a detailed framework with clear timelines, targets, and commitments agreed with international partners.”
According to him, the International Monetary Fund had projected financial support of $2.2 billion for Ghana’s energy sector, with the ESRP identified as a key mechanism to prevent supply disruptions.
He further warned that the sector’s financial challenges could worsen significantly if urgent corrective measures are not taken, citing government acknowledgements that cumulative shortfalls could exceed $9 billion.
Mr. Adomako reiterated the caucus commitment to holding the government accountable and ensuring that what it described as a “cynical distortion of facts” does not go unchallenged.
By 1960news.com
