The Minority in Parliament has dismissed claims that the recent fire at the Akosombo Substation is responsible for the country’s ongoing power outages, insisting the crisis predates the incident.
Addressing a press conference on Tuesday, April 28, the Deputy Ranking Member on Parliament’s Energy Committee, Collins Adomako-Mensah, argued that the electricity challenges—commonly referred to as “dumsor”—have persisted since January.
“Ghana’s power crisis… was not caused by any accident at Akosombo. It was caused by this government,” he stated.
He described the April 23 fire as “the latest and most dramatic symptom” of what he called a deteriorating power sector under the current administration led by John Dramani Mahama.
Mr Adomako-Mensah cautioned against attributing the outages solely to the substation incident, warning that such claims would distort the origins of the crisis.
“The Mahama government must not be permitted to use this incident as a convenient alibi for a crisis that predates it by more than a year,” he said.
The Minority further presented a timeline of disruptions, noting that Ghanaians across the country had already been experiencing frequent and prolonged outages before the Akosombo incident.
According to him, the Electricity Company of Ghana had issued several emergency and maintenance notices in April, alongside public apologies over unstable supply and damage to electrical appliances.
He painted a grim picture of the situation prior to the fire, highlighting its impact on daily life and economic activity.
“Communities were living in darkness… industries were hemorrhaging losses. Cold stores were warm. Hospitals were straining on generators,” he said.
The Minority maintains that the power crisis is rooted in deeper structural and management challenges, and has vowed to challenge any narrative that links it solely to the Akosombo incident.
