The Minority in Parliament has dismissed claims that the recent fire outbreak at the Akosombo substation triggered the ongoing nationwide power outages, insisting the electricity crisis had already taken hold months earlier.

Addressing a press conference on Tuesday, April 28, Deputy Ranking Member on Parliament’s Energy Committee, Collins Adomako-Mensah said the persistent power cuts popularly referred to as “dumsor” began well before the April 23 incident at Akosombo.

According to him, the outages that many Ghanaians have experienced since January cannot be blamed on a single accident, arguing instead that the challenges stem from deeper problems within the country’s energy sector.

He accused the government of failing to properly manage the power sector, describing the fire at the Akosombo substation as only the latest indication of a system already under severe pressure.

Mr. Adomako-Mensah further argued that attempts to link the current power challenges solely to the Akosombo incident would ignore the longstanding difficulties consumers had already been facing across the country.

He maintained that before the fire outbreak, several communities had already been dealing with frequent and unannounced blackouts that disrupted homes, businesses, and public services.

The lawmaker also referenced a series of emergency and maintenance notices issued by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) in recent weeks, as well as public acknowledgements from the company over unstable electricity supply and damage to electrical appliances.

According to the Minority, the prolonged outages had severely affected economic activity, with businesses recording losses while hospitals and other essential institutions increasingly relied on generators to operate.

Mr. Adomako-Mensah stressed that the broader issues confronting Ghana’s energy sector existed long before the Akosombo substation fire and should remain central to discussions about the country’s power challenges.