The Africa Centre for Energy Policy(ACEP) has revealed three major political parties in this year’s elections – the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the New Patriotic Party (NPP), and the Convention People’s Party (CPP) – made a total of 27 manifesto promises in the power sector and 28 policy promises in the oil and gas sector.
ACEP disclosed this in an analysis of the manifestos of the three parties as part of its citizens’ energy manifesto campaign.
ACEP, in a report dubbed the energy manifesto monitor, disclosed that the opposition NPP made more policy and programme promises on power with 18 as against the NDC’s 15 while CPP presented 12 policy options.
It also revealed that both CPP and NPP made more promises in oil and gas than the NDC.
Speaking at the launch of Citizens’ Energy Manifesto Monitor in Accra, Dr Amin Adam, Executive Director of ACEP, said: “As far as oil and gas sector is concerned, for the 28 different policies the NDC promised 12 while the NPP and CPP each promised 17. When it comes to the power sector, out of the 27, this time it is the reverse – the CPP promised 12, the NPP 18 and the NDC 15. But if you go through all these policies, 28 policies for the oil and gas sector, we see more differences between the parties than we see agreement between them. In other words, they have unique policies which do not cut across the policies of other parties but when it comes to the power sector, we see more consensuses. For instance, the NPP and the NDC agreed on 10 policies that they will do and so we see more consensus between the parties, but why not? The oil and gas sector is new, some of the parties are even yet to appreciate what the oil sector means”.
According to Dr Adam, the main objective for tracking the energy manifestos of the various political parties is to help better inform the electorate.
“We wanted to showcase that elections in Ghana can be issue-based and not based on name calling and insults and so to that extent we decided to focus on the energy sector and explain the energy sector to Ghanaians so they can interrogate the manifesto promises the parties are going to make so far as the sector is concerned and that can help us make the election issue-based…” he stated.
Source: ClassFMonline
