Akosombo substation fire not cause of dumsor —Minority claims

The Minority in Parliament has dismissed claims that the recent fire outbreak at the Akosombo substation is the cause of ongoing power outages affecting parts of the country, insisting that Ghana’s electricity challenges predate the incident.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, April 28, the Deputy Ranking Member on Parliament’s Energy Committee, Collins Adomako-Mensah, argued that the current wave of power interruptions—commonly referred to as “dumsor”—began long before the April 23 substation fire.

He maintained that Ghana has been experiencing persistent electricity instability since January 25, and therefore the crisis cannot be attributed to a single incident at Akosombo.

“Ghana's power crisis, the dumsor that millions of Ghanaians have been enduring since January 25, was not caused by any accident at Akosombo. It was caused by this government,” he said.

Mr. Adomako-Mensah described the April 23 fire incident at the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) substation as only the most visible manifestation of deeper structural challenges within the power sector.

“The events of 23rd April are the latest and most dramatic symptom of a power sector left to decay under the NDC's incompetent stewardship,” he added.

He cautioned against attributing the ongoing electricity challenges solely to the Akosombo incident, warning that doing so would misrepresent the true 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, and the Minority will not allow that cynical rewriting of history to pass unchallenged,” he said.

The Minority further presented what it described as a timeline of sustained power disruptions across the country, insisting that many communities had been grappling with outages well before the substation fire occurred.

“Long before the event of 23rd April 2026, Ghanaians across every region of this country had been enduring persistent, unannounced, and devastating power outages,” he noted.

He added that the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) had issued multiple emergency notices and maintenance alerts in April, alongside public apologies from management over unstable power supply and damage to electrical appliances.

According to him, the situation had already placed significant strain on households, businesses, and essential public services.

“Communities were living in darkness, not for hours, but for days. Industries were hemorrhaging losses. Cold stores were warm. Hospitals were straining on generators,” he stated.

He stressed that these conditions existed prior to the Akosombo incident and should be considered in any fair assessment of Ghana’s current energy challenges.

The Minority maintains that the power crisis reflects deeper systemic issues within the energy sector and not a single isolated event, calling for a more comprehensive national conversation on the stability of electricity supply.