The Ghanaian President, John Mahama yesterday blamed Nigeria for the current power outage experienced in the country.
The President while speaking yesterday attributed the power outage in Ghana to the delay in delivery of crude oil ordered from Nigeria, adding that the continuous attacks on oil installations in Nigerian had been responsible for the delay of crude oil which was ordered last month.
Recall that Ghana had boasted of uninterrupted power supply some months ago but has for a few weeks been hit with power outages in many parts of the country especially in Accra, the capital.
While speaking at the Eid-il-Fitr celebration yesterday, the Ghanaian President said: “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.
“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.”
In response to the delay, Mahama disclosed that he had ordered the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company to start storing at least one month of light crude oil to mitigate against the shortfall.
“We were not affected the way we are currently affected.
“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.”