John Jinapor responds to Akufo-Addo

Member of Parliament  for the Yapei- Kusawgu Constituency  and a former Deputy Minister for Power, Energy & Petroleum, John Abdulai Jinapor  has responded to comments he claims President Akufo-Addo made about him last Friday at Yapei.

 Below is his full statement:

During the recent visit of President Akufo-Addo to the Savannah Region, the chiefs of the Yapei-Kusawgu Constituency sought to enquire from the President when he will fulfill his campaign promises of creating a new district out of the Central Gonja District and the establishment of a new Senior High school in the Kusawgu area.

In response, President Akuffo-Addo rather chose to throw wild allegations against me, John Abdulai Jinapor, for what he described as my inability to connect some 17 communities to the national electricity grid. As if that was not enough, he proceeded to accuse me of not helping to establish the Senior High school that he, President Akufo-Addo promised.

For the record, when I was appointed Deputy Minister for Energy and Petroleum, the Yapei-Kusawgu Constituency had only 4 towns connected to the national grid (i.e., Buipe, Yapei, Sankpala and Kusawgu).

 By dint of hard work, the constituency currently has about 100 communities connected to the national grid as part of an aggressive national electrification programme under the John Mahama NDC administration.

 So, Mr. President, if we have only 17 towns yet to be connected to the national grid, the critical question you should answer is what have you done so far to complement what you inherited? You cannot be sleeping on the job and blame others for your own failures.

More importantly, at national level, the NDC Government expanded access to electricity from 50% to 83.24%. This can be confirmed in Paragraph 463 of the 2017 budget as presented by Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta: “Under rural electrification, 1,212 communities were connected to the national grid, increasing the national electricity access rate from 80.5 percent to 83.24 percent”.

President Akufo-Addo since assuming office and despite receiving over GH¢20 billion in ESLA Revenues, has only increased the access rate by a paltry 3%— from 83.24% to 86.63% as captured under Paragraph 810 of the 2022 budget: “In pursuit of H.E. The President’s aspiration to achieve universal coverage of electricity by 2024, a total of 162 communities were connected to the national grid thereby increasing the national electricity access rate from 85.17 percent in 2020 to 86.63 percent in 2021.”

On the education front, President Mahama can be credited for the provision of three (3) Senior High Schools (Buipe Senior High, Buipe Technical and Mpaha Senior High) in the Yapei-Kusawgu Constituency.

It is an undeniable fact that under the leadership of President Mahama, the Yapei-Kusawgu witnessed the commencement and commissioning of the Buipe Cement Factory and the Sheanut Processing factory not to mention the ultramodern Buipe District Hospital.

Unfortunately, under President Akuffo-Addo, the Sheanut factory has been grossly mismanaged and run-down for some time now. No wonder he conveniently refused to visit Buipe, the district capital of the Central Gonja District.

I wish to entreat President Akufo-Addo to crosscheck his facts in future before seeking to deceive the citizenry with concocted, unsubstantiated, and fabricated allegations.

Ghanaians are indeed suffering under the abysmal performance of the Nana and Bawumia government and the least they can expect from this non-performing government is to be truthful and honest with the facts.

 John Abdulai Jinapor

Former Deputy Minister for Energy and Petroleum

26th August 2022