Stop the ECG Concession and let Ghanaians manage the Facility

The ECG concession issue has been up for some time now. There have been workers agitating towards it and some Ghanaians have also expressed their opinions on it. But it seems the governments of the two major political parties, the NDC and NPP are bent on giving this STRATEGIC NATIONAL FACILITY into the hands of foreigners. Have those who are pushing for this concession thought of its implications? Maybe they have not. Then I want to warn that this action will harm the present generation and those yet unborn. Ghanaians, do you know that the Bond of 1844 signed by some Fante chiefs and the British traders which eventually led to the British colonizing the Gold Coast, now Ghana, was a form of CONCESSION?

Again, when Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown and his flagship project, the 75,000 acre rubber plantation in the Western Region was taken over by Firestone, what has happened to that project now?

How can government of these two parties eat their cake and still have it? Governments after Nkrumah have all been talking about the welfare of Ghanaians. They also mention about job creation, saying this can happen when our agriculture is modernized and again when there is massive industrialization.

But how can we grow our economy when the source of our energy is in the hands of foreigners – Americans to be specific? Apart from this, what due diligence was done to assess the benefits or otherwise to the chiefs and people of Ghana before the governments of NDC and NPP agreed on the concession? How much is the CONCESSION worth? $500 million (dollars) for 20 years, isn’t it? OK! Let us do some calculations.

Let us assume that the electricity consuming population in the whole country is 5 million. Let us put the average consumption rate per month at Ghc¢50.00 (Fifty Ghana Cedis).

See Chart below:

ECP (Electricity Consuming Public)
5,000,000

RPM (Rate Per Month)
GH¢50.00

RCPM (Rate Consumption Per Month)
GH¢250,000,000

REPY (Consumption Per Year)
Gh¢3,000,000,000

If we change 3,000,000,000 Cedis to dollars at the rate of 5.1, we have $600,000,000 in just one-year. So you see from the computation given, in just over a year, the foreigner who is taking over ECG, would have gotten the money the government has taken. The remaining nineteen years revenue will become undeserved profit for the forejgner who takes over ECG.

The irony however is that, with the intended modernization of our agriculture and the industrialization progam, how can we be sure that POWER to drive these projects would be available when needed?

“All industries of any major economic significance require, as a basic facility, a large and reliable source of power. In fact, the industrialization of Britain, America, Canada, Russia. And other countries too, emerged as a result of the discovery of new sources of energy. New nations like our own, which are determined to catch up, must have a plentiful supply of electricity if they are to achieve any large-scale industrial advance. This basically, was the justification for the Volta River Project. “(Kwame Nkrumah: Africa Must Unite pg 114).

Written by
Dr. Maxwell Awuku
A Nationalist Politician