Recently, Ghanaians found out the hugely anticipated power barges that were promised by this government would arrive by the end of April were actually still under construction.

I took a little time in that article to direct a few words of ire towards this government of John Mahama and his cronies. Government’s in the past have made promises and failed to keep them, it’s something that comes with the territory; but no government has made so many promises and glossed over their failure to fulfil them as apathetically as this government.

Especially in regards to ‘dumsor’. Besides the power barges, there has been many numerous promises of this sort. Surprisingly, they all pass, nothing happens, and Ghanaians continue like nothing ever happened in the first place.

Because this power crisis has been with us for a while, 3 years and counting, this cycle of almost pathological lying must have been with us for a while as well. And actually, it has. As the video at the end of this article proves, President Mahama promised, categorically, that dumsor would be a thing of the past by 2013.

The setting was a presidential debate, before the 2012 election. President Mahama looked Ghanaians in the eye, and made a promise that dumsor would be eradicated by the end of 2013. Even that was after a very patronising speech about the difference between ‘power outages’ and ‘load shedding’, before explaining the problems very eloquently and then concluding that the additional capacity to be added would be the panacea to this load shedding nonsense.

Fast forward three years, and we are still wallowing in the same problem. In fact, it has become worse. Now you’re lucky if you get 48 hours of power within a week. Beyond that, isn’t it amazing that  3 years later we are still where we are, not just in terms of the load shedding but having government lie to us about a potential solution, watch it not pan out, and then shrug and quietly move on?

And still somehow, everyone quietly moves about their business, complains for a second or two on social media, and then moves on? Are we that indifferent to our own suffering? Is it that we have gone through so much that we have become numb to it, or have we developed a weird Stockholm syndrome relationship with this government?

Whichever it is, it is wrong, and it is pathetic. More accountability should be demanded from public officials than this; whether it us the media, the populace, or our very late to the party celebrities.

Otherwise, this sort of empty promises would become the norm, and politicians would constantly throw it out there because they know there’s no consequence to failure- God knows John Mahama and his team have done enough of that.

Maybe we are not really realising the scope of outright indifference and incompetence the government is attaching to handling this problem. Maybe watching the video of this 2012 promise would jolt something in you, get you to realise that you are being taken for a ride by a very eloquent ‘dead goat’

Until something concrete is done about this, from the end of the citizenry, this government would feel they can get away with anything. And so long as they have that feeling, no real change would be made in the hellish life the ordinary Ghanaian is forced to endure these days.

Watch the video below….

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQxx2GfPvvI