Power outages caused by saboteurs – Mahama

Due to the action of saboteurs on oil terminals in Nigeria, crude oil that Ghana ordered last month has not arrived and that has created some power generation problems for the country recently, President John Dramani Mahama has revealed.

Many parts of the country, especially the capital, have witnessed a resurrection of the power outages, a problem which lasted four years but was declared over by former Minister for Power Dr Kwabena Donkor last year.

President John Dramani Mahama, speaking on the occasion of the Eid ul-Fitr celebration in Accra Wednesday July 6, said the power outages were as a result of sabotage in Nigeria.

He said: “Recently, there have been some issues with electricity tariffs. The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has done some work on it, they have done a realignment of their billing system and I believe that people can begin to feel some relief in terms of the bills that they were paying.

“The bills have been made more transparent so that you can tell with every unit you buy, how much the value of the unit is. It is not a subsidy, it’s a realignment of the billing system that makes it possible for us to be able to know how much we are spending on electricity.

“Aside from that, we have recently suffered some generational problems. I held a stakeholder meeting with all those involved in the power sector. Because of sabotage in Nigeria on the terminals, crude oil that we ordered last month has not arrived and so it has created some generation problem for us.”

He added: “But I have asked the Bulk Oil Storage [and Transportation] Company to start storing at least one month of light crude oil supplied to Ghana so that in the event anything happens at the supply end in Nigeria, we are not affected the way we are currently affected. And, so, I will crave your indulgence and urge all of you to understand. We are not declaring load shedding, I believe things will be normalised. But we are taking steps every day to ensure that Ghana has security when it comes to power.”