On Friday, August 24, 2007, President John Agyekum-Kufuor and his New Patriotic Party (NPP) government cut the sod to commence work on Ghana’s most significant hydroelectric power project since the construction of the Akosombo Dam, otherwise known as the Volta River Project, or Scheme, by President Kwame Nkrumah and his Convention People’s Party (CPP) a little over forty years ago.
In reality, however, when completed five years hence, the Bui Dam, located in the Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana, would become the country’s most significant power generator ever. For it would also be the first time in the country’s half-century of postcolonial sovereignty that a project of this kind has been undertaken for the full and unfettered benefit of Ghanaians.
For while, indeed, the Akosombo Dam was built to a power capacity two-and-half times the magnitude of that to be generated by the dam at Bui, 912 megawatts to 400 megawatts, respectively, it is equally significant to observe that the CPP-commissioned Akosombo Dam directly provided Ghana with only 20-percent of its energy capacity, with the rest of the 80-percent being generated for the exclusive benefit of the American-owned Volta Aluminum (or Aluminium) Company (VALCO). In essence, therefore, in terms of benefit, Ghanaians stand to receive a little more than twice the energy capacity afforded them by the Akosombo Dam over the course of some 40 years.
To be certain, it was his abjectly neocolonialist approach to the contractual funding of the Akosombo Dam by then-Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah that brought the latter to a bitter disagreement with the leaders of the main legislative opposition party of the time, the United Party (UP), namely, Drs. J. B. Danquah, K. A. Busia and Kurankyi-Taylor, and Mr. William Ofori-Atta. For while the Ghana Government was compelled, by contract, to foot more than half the bill of the cost of Akosombo’s construction, the country was allowed to benefit from just a little more than one-fifths, or some 20-percent, of the power generated.
Interestingly, blissfully ignorant politicians of Fourth Republican Ghana’s parliamentary opposition, largely members of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the rump Convention People’s Party (CPP) have been quick to highlight the fact of what these blissfully ignorant politicians term as the United Party leadership’s “regressive attempt” to stall the construction of the Akosombo Dam.
It is also significant to note that even as far back as 1948 the Watson Commission, which investigated massive rioting in the erstwhile Gold Coast, wisely and, in retrospect, altruistically, counseled against the construction of the Akosombo Dam by an imminent and future Ghanaian government, unless the construction of the Akosombo Dam was aimed at the full benefit and industrial development of an independent Ghana (see David Hart’s The Volta Project: A Case Study in Politics and Technology 51-53).
The preceding cautionary note from the Chairman of the British-constituted Watson Commission (Sir Aiken Watson) was issued at least five years prior to Nkrumah’s entry into his patently neocolonialist compact on the Volta River Scheme with VALCO’s Mr. Edgar Kaiser and the Eisenhower Administration of the United States of America.
Intriguingly, those who now claim that the estimated $ 622 million Bui hydroelectric power project is not worth its contractual price-tag, have remained deafeningly silent about the fact that during the 40 years that the Government of Ghana operated the Akosombo Dam, the country never gained a dime from its massive investment in the project. Indeed, this writer was a little amused recently when Ghana’s opposition press started brandishing a purported annual loss of some $ 17 million, allegedly, as a result of the recent power outage in the country. The factual reality is that since 1965, when the Akosombo Dam was operationally inaugurated, Ghana has been losing exactly the foregoing amount of money from its operation of the Akosombo Dam, with the remarkable exception of some three years during the Acheampong junta (see David Hart).
In short, the Volta River Project compact – or contractual agreement – as entered into by President Nkrumah, was the practical equivalent of Ghana having voluntarily delivered herself to the West, in general, and the United States, in particular, for servile – or slavish – abuse or unremitting exploitation.
Remarkably, albeit hardly surprisingly, among those who railed vehemently against the construction of the Bui Dam, by the Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party, were Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom, of the rump Convention People’s Party, and Messrs. Ato Ahwoi and Tsatsu Tsikata, of the so-called National Democratic Congress. Some among the latter group, such as Messrs. Doe Adjaho and Kwame Ampofo, have even pushed against any attempt by the NPP government to use revenue generated from cocoa, Ghana’s staple cash crop, to defray the $ 622 million loan contracted from the Chinese government.
And so Ghanaians know, right now, exactly who stands for or against our collective interests and national security. And so when the NDC’s Asutifi South Parliamentarian, Mr. Collins Dauda, attempts to vacuously reprise the patently bogus CPP-mantra about the most intelligent and astute Ghanaian leaders having attempted to stall work on the Akosombo Dam, one wonders why his evidently well-meaning constituents continue to pay his salary in exchange for such gross misrepresentation in Ghana’s august National Assembly (Ghanaweb.com 8/25/07).
Needless to say, in terms of today’s monetary currency, the cost of Akosombo is conservatively pegged at about three to four times the estimated cost of the Bui Dam project. And one thing that is also likely differentiate the construction of Bui from Akosombo is the fact that there will be absolutely no segregated housing at Bui for the approximately 3,000 prospective Ghanaian employees and their non-Ghanaian counterparts.
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