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| John Mahama |
Ghanaian President, John
Mahama, on Wednesday said the delay in the delivery of the crude oil ordered
from Nigeria had created power generation problems for his country, leading to
outages in many parts.
Media
report continues:
Mahama
said the sabotage of oil terminals in Nigeria occasioned the delay in the
supply of crude oil, which Ghana ordered last month.
Many
parts of Ghana, especially the capital, Accra, have witnessed a resurgence of
power outages, a problem that lasted four years but was declared over by former
Minister for Power Dr. Kwabena Donkor, last year, according to
Classfmonline.com.
Mahama,
speaking on the occasion of the Eid ul-Fitr celebration in Accra, was quoted to
have said the power outages were as a result of sabotage in Nigeria.
He
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.”
The
President said he had asked the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company to
start storing at least one month of light crude oil supplied for Ghana so that
in the event of any problem at the supply end in Nigeria, adding, “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 normalized, but we are taking
steps every day to ensure that Ghana has security when it comes to power.”
The
West African Gas Pipeline Company had late last month said it had suspended the
flow of gas from Nigeria to Ghana over unpaid bills by the Ghanaian government.
Ghana’s
state power producer, Volta River Authority, owes Nigeria’s N-Gas around US$180m,
while N-Gas in turn owes the pipeline company US$104m, WAGPCo spokeswoman,
Harriet Wereko-Brobby, had told Reuters.
N-Gas
is the main supplier of gas to Ghana’s Volta River Authority through the West
African Gas Pipeline.
The President was completely silent of the status of the unpaid bills by the Ghanaian government which is due to Nigeria.
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