President John Dramani Mahama has asked the good people of Ghana to blame the Almighty God, and not his ruling National Democratic Congress administration for the erratic and rampant spates of “light off” that has hit the country ever since the NDC took over the reins of governance.

At yesterday’s IEA Presidential debate, President Mahama, in his attempt to rationalize the load shedding that has brought untold hardships on the lives of Ghanaians and industry, stated that the rupturing of the West Africa Gas Pipeline, which supplies gas to fire the Aboadze Thermal Plant, was caused by “an act of God”.

President Mahama explained that the dropping of an anchor by a ship, which in turn ruptured the gas pipeline, was caused by God and not the NDC and as such pledged that his administration will end the load shedding exercise by 2013.

President Mahama made this remark in an attempt to answer the question on how his administration would tackle the issue of erratic power supply that has hit the country.

The Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, Nana AKufo-Addo, in answering the same question touted the achievements of the Kufuor-led NPP administration, which, he said, added some 560 megawatts of installed capacity to the country’s energy requirements.

According to Nana Addo, had the NPP been re-elected in the 2008 elections, Ghana would have increased its installed capacity from the 2,400 megawatts, it left, to some 5,000 megawatts by 2012. This, Nana Addo explained, would have completely ended the country’s perennial load shedding problem.

On how, he was, in the short-term, going to solve the power crisis that has affected Ghana, Nana Addo explained that the bringing back on stream of the Emergency Power Plant and the Mines Reserve Plant, which were both purchased by the NPP, and have been abandoned by John Mahama and the NDC, would alleviate the plight of Ghanaians.

Nana Addo explained that, these two power plants alone have the capacity to add 200 megawatts of power to Ghana’s energy demands, which will in the short-term end the load shedding exercise. But for political expediency, according to Nana Addo, the NDC has abandoned these two power plants to lie idle.

In the long term, Nana Addo explained that the utilization of gas from Ghana’s oil fields, which solely belong to Ghana, is the long-term solution to solving the country’s perennial load shedding problem.

However, due to turf wars being fought by NDC apparatchiks over who controls the gas, the construction of a gas infrastructure project had been delayed by over 3 years.

His administration, Nana Addo said, would harness the gas from the jubilee fields, and ensure it serves as a source of cheap energy for Ghanaians and industry.