Prof Peter Twumasi – NSA Director-General

Wednesday, August 23, was exactly a month when electricity supply to the nation’s pre¬mier sports facility, the Accra Sports Stadium, was cut by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
It was about the third time the incident had oc¬curred in a year at such an important facility often lik¬ened to the iconic Wembley Stadium in England and the reason for that is apparent.
This, clearly, does not augur well for a nation that demands respect as a sports nation.
In March 2022, the ECG embarked on a similar ex¬ercise that left the National Sports Authority (NSA), man¬agers of the nation’s sports facilities, in hot water; having to cough a whopping amount of GHȻ508,000 as debt owed the company.
The leader of the Task Force explained that power would only be restored af¬ter 50 per cent of the debt was settled.
In a few days’ time, power was restored though doubts hovered over whether the NSA, which operates as an agency under the Ministry of Youth and Sports (MoYS), actually made the settlement.
Eight months later, the pessimists were, perhaps, vindicated when another ECG ‘delegation’ visited the Stadium to disconnect power again; this time quoting a debt of GHȻ390,000.
Attempts to convince the ECG staff to re¬scind the decision failed after the NSA offered to pay only GHȻ30,000.
Nine months on, the power nightmare has visited the NSA again, witness¬ing, perhaps, the longest pow¬er outage on the state-owned facility – a month.
Although, the exact amount is yet to be made public, snippets of informa¬tion indicates that it is an accumulation of previous debts owed and now running over GHȻ500,000.
And for a country that wants to be credited as a sports loving nation, producing some of the finest ath¬letes across boxing, football, table ten¬nis, tennis, athletics, taekwon¬do among others, the story or state of the Accra Sports Stadium leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
Clearly, it calls into ques¬tion the nation’s readiness to actually develop sports to the level where it begins to yield the desired dividends.
Within this period of ‘Ac¬cra Sports Stadium Dumsor’ administrative work of the several federations with offices located in the stadium have grinded to a halt.
Restaurant owners as well as other operatives within the facility have been affect¬ed.
But of greater concern to every lover of sports is the negative impact the outage has had on athletes that use the facility at night.
Badminton, table tennis, taekwondo, judo practi¬tioners and other users are now forced to close before dark¬ness sets in because the power from the stand-in generator is way above the capacity required.
Maybe, it was in this wisdom that members of the badmin¬ton fraternity decided to hire smaller generators to power lights to train in the evenings but with directives from the authorities to put a stop to it, they would be forced to re-adjust their times.
What this mean is that players’ training schedules have been truncated for a month, a situation that will definitely take a toll on preparations with the 2023 Africa Games and other qual¬ifiers lurking.
Certainly, money may be the huge factor to have occasioned this development and the earlier government through the MoYS steps in, the better it will be for Ghana.
With the Africa Games just about seven months to go, athletes at the ‘final stretch’ in terms of prepa¬ration, must be given the needed push in their quest to win laurels.
As usual, the MoYS would be singing the usual ‘no mon¬ey’ refrain but the entire Ac¬cra Sports Stadium plunging into total darkness is certain¬ly not a story anyone would want to tell about a country that hopes to raise new Abedi Peles, Anthony Yeboahs, Azu¬mah Nelsons, Frank Oforis, Ike Quarteys and other great sports personalities.
By Andrew Nortey