Ghanaian President blames Buhari's Govt for power outage in Ghana

The president of Ghana, John Mahama has blamed the current power generation problems experienced in his country, on the inability of the Nigerian government to curtail disruptions in oil terminals.

Mahama who said this during eid-el-fitr speech at a ceremony in Ghana, noted that the sabotage of oil terminals in Nigeria occasioned the delay in the delivery of

crude oil from Nigeria to power thermal plants, which Ghana ordered last month.

According to Mahama, Ghana’s electricity supply has taken a dip as a result of this reason.

“Recently, there have been some issues with electricity tariffs; the Electricity Company of Ghana 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,” said Mahama.

“Aside from that, we have recently suffered some generational problems. I held a stakeholders’ 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 generational problem for us.”

The West African country has been experiencing a massive short fall in electricity production in recent times causing individuals and companies to complain.

The president however assured citizens that his government is doing all it can to arrest the situation.

“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.”

Meanwhile, The West African Gas Pipeline Company, last month said it had suspended the flow of gas from Nigeria to Ghana over unpaid bills by the Ghanaian government.

According to the company’s spokeswoman, Harriet Wereko-Brobby, Ghana’s state power producer, Volta River Authority, owes Nigeria’s N-Gas around $180m, while N-Gas in turn owes the pipeline company $104m.

N-Gas is the main supplier of gas to Ghana’s Volta River Authority through the West African Gas Pipeline.

Since the resurgence of militancy in the Niger Delta region, the Niger Delta Avengers has blown up major oil facilities in the region, which has disrupted oil production in the country.

- Thewhistler