NDC Base Sees Sabotage in Jinapor’s Kept Men

By Gifty Boateng

The familiar smell of political conspiracy is once again wafting through Ghana’s power sector. As intermittent blackouts plague parts of the country, grassroots supporters of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) have identified an unusual culprit: their own Energy Minister, John Jinapor.
The charge, circulating heavily on traditional and social media, is that Jinapor has kept in place top officials inherited from the previous Akufo-Addo administration alleged New Patriotic Party (NPP) sympathisers who are quietly undermining the government’s efforts to keep the lights on.
Last Thursday’s fire at the Akosombo power control centre has only fuelled the speculation. To the party faithful, the blaze bore the hallmarks of deliberate orchestration. And the man in the crosshairs is their own minister, accused of a “recalcitrant” refusal to dismiss his friends.
The immediate trigger for the latest outcry was Jinapor’s decision over the weekend to ask the Chief Executive of the Ghana Grid Company (GridCo), Ing Mark Awuah Baah, to step aside pending investigation into the fire. For the grassroots, this is too little, too late – and raises more questions than it answers.
Baah had apparently retired last year. But Jinapor, also MP for Yapei-Kusawgu, granted him a one-year contract extension, keeping him in post until July 2026. The move, say NDC insiders, was always a source of deep displeasure.
The minister’s deputy, Frank Okyere, is also said to be a personal friend of Jinapor and, critics add, another staunch NPP sympathiser to whom the minister defers on technical matters. The prediction now making the rounds is that Okyere will be the next in line to take over from his boss.
GridCo, created in 2006 under former president John Agyekum Kufuor and operational from 2008, was designed to manage the national transmission system independently of the Volta River Authority. But sector players now argue that it has become the weakest link in the chain and a major threat to stability. Investment in transmission infrastructure, particularly in Kumasi and the Volta Region, has been minimal.
Against this backdrop of distrust, Jinapor announced a significant breakthrough on Monday. Speaking at the Government Accountability Series, he confirmed that two generating units at Akosombo are now back in operation – ahead of schedule, he said – following emergency technical interventions. A third unit is being tested.
The minister was lavish in his praise for the engineers from VRA and GridCo who have remained on site for three consecutive days, working in extreme conditions.
“I am immensely proud,” he said, of their “dedication, professionalism, and unwavering commitment.”
That sentiment is not widely shared in the party’s rank and file.
The former Greater Accra Regional Minister and Tema East MP, Titus Glover, has waded in on the other side criticising the directive for Baah to step aside as a “knee-jerk reaction”. Speaking on Adom FM’s Dwaso Nsem, Glover pointed out that the man is due for pension in June and would soon proceed on leave anyway.
“From a layman’s point of view, the fire outbreak was an accident,” Glover said. “If there is evidential proof that some people are sabotaging efforts, then we can hold them. But we shouldn’t act based on gossip and speculation.”
He also questioned the logic of the shake-up at ECG’s Ashanti regional leadership: “These people who are being sacked, are they the cause of the problem?”
The underlying tension is not new. Since the NDC returned to power, the party’s base has been watching closely to see who controls the levers of the state. In the energy sector historically a political battleground keeping inherited NPP appointees in sensitive posts was always going to be a hard sell.
For now, Jinapor has survived the immediate outcry. But with load management continuing and investigations into the Akosombo fire still underway, the question on the streets of Accra and Kumasi is whether the minister is being outmanoeuvred by the very people he chose to trust.
The official line is that technical expertise must trump political loyalty. But in Ghana’s hyper-partisan environment, that argument rarely travels far. The grassroots are fuming and they are watching.