Opinions of Monday, 25 July 2016

Columnist: Dabbousi, Fadi

Dumsor: Lies and empty promises - Ghanaians beware

President John MahamaPresident John Mahama

Eight years, folks! Yes, it's been eight long years since this nation began grappling with the compounded results of incompetence, insensitivity, misplaced priorities, mismanagement, misappropriation of the national coffers, bad judgment, and sheer impudence towards the nation by the NDC government that has never had anything better up its sleeve for Ghanaians except intimidation, coercion, terrorism, murder, and dictatorial governance!

And the apologies who make up this regime exhibit swindling tactics that they bloviate about and embellish with bombastic speeches as worthless as hot flatulence emanating from a stinky hyena overstuffed with the rotten flesh of a carcass.

The electricity crisis returned after H.E. John Agyekum Kufuor solved the problem. It is an established fact that the sustenance of energy is in the continuous build up on existing facilities as cities, townships, and populations continue to grow.

President Atta Mills, spent most of his time trying to prosecute his government officials for massive corruption, the latest one prior to his death being that commenced against the then Vice President, H.E. John Dramani Mahama.

It was premised by the suspected embezzlement of millions of dollars through the purchase of 7 Embraer Airplanes from Brazil, and the construction of a hangar at a cost of 2 million dollars. Soon, albeit, H.E. Atta Mills went six feet under after his body was loaded into the back of a taxi and sent to the maternity ward of the 37 military hospital. May he rest in peace.

Soon, everything spiralled out of control when John Dramani Mahama was sworn into office as H.E. the President of The Republic of Ghana:Endless promises, initially, sounded melodiously rhapsodising, but soon mistuned into obnoxious discords much like the brays of mules and the clucks of shepherds to their herds.

All sorts of things were said to the Ghanaian people by elements of the ruling NDC party in defense of broken promises.

Once, a shortfall of crude oil to feed the electricity generating plants was blamed on a ship that sailed over a supply line from Nigeria and severed it. Another time, we were told that Nigeria was sabotaging Ghana, when in actual fact we owed that sister country whopping sums of money in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Instead of paying the debt to light up the darkness that Ghanaians were suffering, the Presidency was neck deep in indulgence, printing diary books to the tune of millions of dollars, dishing out Toyota Landcruisers to "chooboi" supporters of John Mahama, also in the millions of dollars.

Sources have it that in the 8 years of the NDC, over 180 million dollars worth of Landcruisers and other vehicles were procured for government and high level recipients of presidential gratuities. That amount could have certainly resolved the crisis to a comfortable extent!

Then our gloom was further darkened by the sad news that ten "working" generating plants that were procured by President Kufuor were rented out to Sierra Leone for a fee of 10,000 dollars each, monthly, because they were inop (Inoperative). What an insult it was to the Sierra Leonian people, though. Unfortunately, their mission in Ghana kept mute over this grievous situation.

Soon, we heard about the Ameri deal, which was fraught with instances of corruption that stank to Babylon. President John Mahama leased ten turbines at a cost of 510 million dollars when the machines could have been purchased outright for 220 million dollars. What happened to the excess 290 million dollars? Whose pocket did the money slide into at all?

Since then, we as a nation, have been saddled with a constant monthly charge of 9 million dollars. Is it any wonder that Ghanaians are suffering and cannot see the light of day?

Oh lest I forget, there is the Turkish Barge that is supposed to give us light, but is rather adding misery to the hell of darkness that we are in because of the erratic nature of its operation.

By the way, the barges promised were three and after a couple of years of promise and fail, only one came. Of course that was also not without incident as it was reported that it lost its way at sea for a few months. Ghanaians, haven't we had enough insults from John Mahama and his government?

The sort of disaster makes this whole situation comical. Mr President sacks his energy minister on the 1st of January, 2016, for not fulfilling his promise to end dumsor by that deadline. Paradoxically, the president should have done same to himself having reneged on most of his promises, and broken others too. Of the series of promises to end dumsor, the one made at the IEA was most atrocious.

President John Mahama told many untruths about how his government was putting plans in place to resolve load shedding, making the mother of all promises that by the first year of his next term in office, if he won elections 2012, "load shedding would be a thing of the past".

Compulsive lies and the convolutions of cooked up stories that are ever winding have never sunk well with Ghanaians. Eight years on since the advent of the NDC in 2009, we are still struggling to find our bearing as a nation hounded by babies with sharp teeth who have gnawed on the little knits of our fabric and torn us as apart.

Ghanaians, beware of John Mahama and his sweet lies. He can never manage this country! He can never pull us out of the abyss that his incompetence has sunk us into! It is time to retire John Mahama to the dungeons of history. Vote him out!

It is time to change the diaper folks, and for the same reason too. #VoteJohnMahamaOut #BringNanaAkufoAddoToSaveGhana