Bawumia-nomics; Allotey Jacobs’ logic

IN his 2014 political lectures when he warned that "if the fundamentals are weak, the exchange rate will expose you”, Alhaji Dr Mahamudu Bawumia spoke like a prophet, in the Christian use of the word.

 He was both foretelling the run-aground economy under John Mahama’s National Democratic Congress (NDC) government of the time and foretelling the 2021-2024 battered economy under the supervision of Akufo-Addo’s New Patriotic Party (NPP). 

Like most prophets, Bawumia himself did not know that he would be in the centre of this present feeling of helplessness among Ghanaians. Worse, and again, like many prophets, he finds himself impotent, totally helpless as Ghana keeps groping for solutions. 

In 2024, an unmanageable electricity sector is exposing the weak fundamentals of the economy. Blame President Akufo-Addo. It is unimaginable that a man who he himself presented to Ghanaians as the economic saviour has, for the past seven years, been sidelined into a “driver’s mate”, so although he is paid the full salary of a Vice-President and economic saviour, Ghanaians have to wait till 2025 to benefit from his long-withheld plan of salvation. 

Unfortunately, while we can count on IMF bailouts for solution, there is no solution for impunity. No medicine can cure a bad system driven by a Minister of Energy and an ECG Chief Executive who sit on Mount Olympus, high and lifted up in a position from where their feet do not touch the ground. 

Many people do not bother to look for the definition of democracy: they find it when they see one in operation. Same is Dumsor: define it what you will, a consistently irregular pattern of power-today alternating with power-lessness tomorrow will expose it, with terrible consequences such as forcing businesses to invest in gensets or sending workers home, and helpless citizens battling heat in the sweltering pitch of an infernally long night. 

The Energy Minister and the ECG boss are not factoring the fate of kelewele, check-check and tea sellers whose business peaks at night under streetlights.

On television, we saw the cold store owner in Kumasi who had driven all the way to Tema to buy fish worth GH¢40,000. Back in Kumasi, the street on which his cold store is located had been blacked out. The fish went bad. Yet he dared not call it Dumsor because if he did, he’d be giving ammunition to a particular political opponent in an election year. 

The CEO of ECG is not a stupid man. I fell in love with him twice in two months. First time was when he led the ECG task force to the Krobo area to cut off supplies to the people for non-payment of bills. Second time was when he granted a 45-minute television interview. Brilliant submissions. The kind of CEO Ghana needs, I told myself at the time. 

But my study of great achievers reveals a certain quality about them: they know the value of two-way communication and they respect the right of the masses for information.

Though a sound debator, this ECG boss does not recognise the imperative of communicating with masses. Months after the irregular and unpredictable power supply he has not found the people of Ghana worthy enough to be told what the problem is. Perhaps he is being gagged.

In response to the cry of Ghanaians for help, the Mines and Energy Committee of Parliament tasked ECG to fast-track processes to ensure that consumers receive a load-shedding timetable. 

No show

On March 24, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission ordered ECG to publish a load-shedding timetable by April 2. 

No show

From where and when did ECG grow such wings of impunity? 

The answer came when the Energy Minister spoke. Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh spat in the face of Ghanaians and blurted out, “Let those who want the timetable bring it. Why would someone just wish evil for the country?” 

Whaaat!

On Tuesday, March 26, the management and staff of the ministry added insult to injury, saying in a press release, that “Dr Prempeh was simply stating facts.”

Facts? Beg your pardon. Is it also not a “fact” that a cold store owner has GH¢40,000 worth of fish rotten because he had no prior information of 12 hours without power? Does he wish Ghana ill? 

The Ghanaian economic situation, generally, is like the theology of “Limbo”. We are doomed to continue suffering till 2025 for economic and digitised miracles. 

I am using this page to plead with the likes of Allotey Jacobs not to pour salt into our raw wounds. On Peace FM’s last Wednesday edition of ‘Kokrokoo’, he dismissed calls for ECG load-shedding timetable, saying words to the effect that Ghanaians should be imaginative and smart enough to know, by now, the pattern of power supply and draw their own timetable. 

On his way from Cape Coast that morning, he saw whole communities aglow with lights; therefore, in the logic of Allotey Jacobs, “there is no dumsor”!!!