Former Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr. Peter Boamah Otokunor, has taken a swipe at the New Patriotic Party (NPP) over its handling of the energy sector.
He accused the Akufo-Addo-Bawumia government of mismanagement that has led to a significant increase in sector debt.
Speaking on TV3’s The Key Points on Saturday, March 1, 2025, Dr. Otokunor analyzed Ghana’s energy sector challenges, contrasting the records of the NDC and NPP administrations.
He argued that the NPP’s failure to make prudent investments in power generation had worsened the country’s energy situation.
He said, “If you look at the data and compare what President Kufuor left, what President Mahama left, and what we have now, you will realize that between the $1 billion that President Kufuor left and the $2.1 billion that President Mahama left, there was an additional generation capacity of over 2,700 megawatts.”
He credited the John Mahama administration for implementing the Energy Sector Levy Act (ESLA) to manage the sector’s debt, ensuring that future governments could sustain the investments made in power generation.
He accused the NPP of failing to utilize the ESLA funds effectively despite collecting GH¢45 billion in additional revenue.
“They [the NPP] castigated us and said they were going to abolish the ESLA, but they didn’t. Instead, they collected GH¢45 billion more and still did nothing with it, yet accrued an energy sector debt of GH¢70 billion,” he lamented.
Dr. Otokunor also questioned the NPP’s contribution to energy generation, claiming that the government failed to add even five megawatts of new capacity in the past eight years.
“The last independent power project (IPP) that was commissioned three months ago was an agreement signed by the John Mahama administration in 2016.”
“The sod-cutting was done in 2017, meaning they [the NPP] virtually did nothing in terms of new generation capacity,” he added.
Dr. Otokunor called for improved revenue generation and management, a return to the cash waterfall mechanism to ensure timely payments to Independent Power Producers (IPPs), and the resolution of inefficiencies in power distribution.
He advised that properly diagnosing the issues and identifying the right areas to address would make it easier to fix the problem.
Ghana’s energy sector debt has become a major topic of national debate since the Mahama administration took office with stakeholders calling for urgent interventions to prevent further financial strain on the economy.
By Osumanu Al-Hassan/thenewsbulletin24.com