Political appointees and technocrats at the helm of Ghana’s energy sector have exploited the system for personal enrichment, leaving a legacy of dysfunction and debt, according to lawyer and IMANI-Africa Vice President, Kofi Bentil.
Speaking on Joy News’ Newsfile on Saturday, Mr. Bentil said the country’s energy crisis is not simply a matter of technical or financial challenges but is deeply entrenched in a culture of corruption and incompetence.
“The people who run the energy sector, check, when they leave, they leave very rich,” he said bluntly.
Mr. Bentil’s comments come amid renewed public criticism over the introduction of a new fuel tax, part of the Energy Sector Levy (Amendment) Bill, 2025. The levy imposes a GHS1 charge per litre of fuel, which government officials say will raise an estimated GHS5.7 billion annually to support energy sector reforms.
However, the IMANI Vice President dismissed the levy as an unjust financial burden on already-struggling citizens. He argued that the core issues in Ghana’s energy sector lie in poor governance and self-serving leadership—not a lack of funds.
“The problem in our energy sector will not be solved by taxes. It’s a problem of incompetence and corruption,” he asserted.
Mr. Bentil linked the repeated cycle of energy shortfalls, rising tariffs, and new taxes to a lack of accountability in the sector. He accused successive governments of turning a blind eye to the rot, thereby allowing entrenched interests to siphon off resources without delivering meaningful improvements to power generation and distribution.
“Successive administrations have failed to bring discipline to this space. What we are seeing is a continuation of a system where inefficiencies are rewarded and mismanagement goes unpunished,” he said.
Bentil also criticised the effectiveness of past interventions, particularly the Energy Sector Levies Act (ESLA), which was introduced in 2015 to address legacy debts in the power sector. Despite collecting billions of cedis over the years, he said, the sector remains mired in financial distress, with frequent blackouts and ballooning debts to Independent Power Producers (IPPs).
“The ESLA didn’t fix anything. We’ve just continued the cycle of imposing more levies while the real problems remain untouched,” he noted.
The government, however, insists the new levy is critical to stabilising the energy sector. Officials have said the funds will be “ring-fenced” and used strictly for essential costs such as fuel procurement and debt servicing, to help avoid a collapse of supply.
But Mr. Bentil is unconvinced. He believes ring-fencing alone cannot restore trust in a system plagued by what he describes as deliberate mismanagement for personal gain.
“We’ve heard all this before. What’s needed isn’t another tax or another promise—it’s a full reform of how this sector is governed. We need transparency, competence, and above all, accountability,” he said.
As public frustration grows over the rising cost of living, especially fuel prices, Mr. Bentil’s comments strike a nerve among many Ghanaians who feel they are being made to pay for the failures of leadership.
“The ordinary citizen should not keep bearing the cost of someone else’s corruption,” he concluded.
