John Mahama, the former president, is unhappy that Ghanaians gave him the nickname “Mr Dumsor” – Mr power cut – in the peak of the power crisis during his tenure, describing it as “unfair”.
The word “dumsor” became popular in Ghana as a result of the “persistent, irregular, and unpredictable electric power outage” when the National Democratic Congress (NDC) led by Mahama was in power. The situation led to the collapse of many businesses.
Asked by Face Off host Samson Kasumba on Uganda-based NBS Television, whether the nickname was unfair, Mahama replied: “Yeah it was!”
“What you are referring to is the actual energy crisis Ghana went through, the actual cause of the energy crisis was the lack of investment over the years by previous governments in generation. Ghana’s consumption in terms of electricity consumption had been rising about 12% per annum.
High demand
“But the investment in additional generation had been very slow, so we got to a stage where we were demanding and consuming more electricity than we were generating. We had Akosombo Dam, we thought it will last forever, unfortunately it didn’t,” Mahama said.
“And so we were consuming like 2600 megawatts and our production was 2300 megawatts, and so we had to go through period of outages. Now what did I do? I took responsibility, I didn’t blame previous governments, I said ‘yes you call me Mr dumsor, I inherited this problem but I take responsibility for it,’ and so I said ‘I am going to fix this’, by 2015 I had added additional 300 megawatts. I was actually accused of adding more megawatts,” he added.
Mahama said despite his effort to add excess generation, Ghanaians are gradually experiencing the “dumsor” era again under the current government of President Akufo-Addo.
Posted by: Emmanuel Romeo Tetteh
