I don’t know why but most of the news outlets in the country are going with the angle that President Mahama has sacked the ECG boss due to the ongoing power crisis. A quick look through the news item itself shows nothing of the sort.

The Chief of Staff, Prosper Bani, has released a statement that relieves the head of the most reviled public service provider of his duties. Additionally, Rev. Ing. William Hutton-Mensah, the ECG boss in question, is to report to the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum for re-assignment.

Aside from the fact that we don’t really care who this man is—most Ghanaians don’t know him from Adam and it is highly unlikely whoever comes in next is going to fix the dumsor issues. We have developed this unhealthy habit in this country where someone who is purportedly ‘sacked’ for non-performance or incompetence is then put in line for another job by the same people firing him.

If he really was fired due to being unable to fix the dumsor issues, I don’t see how getting him another job, probably a better one, equates to sending the message that incompetence is not something to be brooked. From this instance and other instances that has already occurred this year (I am looking at you, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah), the message in huge letters from the Mahama administration is screw up and we would get you a better job.

Concentrating on the important issue, the dumsor itself, we are not seeing any improvements, in fact is worsens by the day. Instead of practical measures being put in place to fix a long standing problem, we get this news whose purpose I’m not quite sure of. Are we to praise the President for taking such a great decision, are we to admire his intolerance for incompetence? Where has he been for the past two years?

ECG themselves have said they just distribute what power GRIDCO and the VRA supplies them; thus if this is a measure to improve the situation where are the heads rolling at these institutions?

It’s getting a little tiresome hearing of public officials screwing up then getting rewarded for it. It’s getting even more tiresome hearing these supposed fixes from government to problems when in reality nothing constructive has been done.

This is the Ghana we have now, and we are stuck in it. At this rate very soon every public official would be clamouring to screw up just to see what job the presidency can fix them up with when they inevitably get fired.