Politics of Sunday, 22 February 2015

Source: atinkaonline.com

Dumsor: All our leaders have failed – Okyeame Kwame

Hiplife superstar, Okeame Kwame has stirred controversy by claiming the past and present leaders could not escape blame as far as the country’s recurrent energy crisis is concerned.

According to him, all our presidents- right from Dr Kwame Nkrumah to John Mahama should have done far more in tackling the recurrent problem during their tenures in office.

“In 1957, we were six million, now we are 24 million, so our leader then, Kwame Nkrumah in his infinite wisdom should have envisaged the population of Ghana increasing and build a vast energy reserve to meet the demand. The same applies to his successive leaders,” Okyeame Kwame charged.

Speaking on Atinka FM’s morning show dubbed AM Drive hosted by Kwame Adinkra, the ‘Rap Doctor’, who acknowledged that he could receive public bashing over his comments, noted that this was not the time for Ghanaians to be playing politics with the dumsor crisis.

“It saddens me that this whole dumsor thing has been politicized,” the hip life star lamented.

According to him, this is not the time for politicking and that it is rather prudent to hold a national consensus to find a lasting solution to the problem. Asked by his host, who should initiate the national consensus, Okyeame Kwame said, ideally, the president of the Republic should be the initiator.

However, if the president is shy or unwilling to lead in that direction, “the opposition or other civil society groups can take up the challenge,” the originator of the acclaimed “Versatile Show” suggested.

According to him, the proposed national forum on dumsor should involve major stakeholders like engineers, strategists, politicians and businessmen.

He said even Rwanda, which was once ravaged by war, has been able to build a 24 million- dollar solar panel to serve over 8,000 homes, why can’t Ghana, which is regarded as peaceful and blessed with resources such as oil and gold, embark on such a sustainable investment.

“We must make a conscious effort to separate politics from dumsor as a nation for once and come together and solve the energy crisis, the “Faithful” hit maker advised.