'I've taken Ghana to the next level' – Mahama

President John Mahama has said that he has taken Ghana to the next level with his first term in office, for which reason he merits a second term in office.

“… I believe we are going in the right direction,” Mr Mahama told Paul Adom-Otchere on Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana programme on Tuesday, 6 September, adding that: “We’ve been faced with challenges and I’ve always said that I haven’t made Ghana a paradise but from what I took over from my predecessors, I’ve taken Ghana to the next level and when I get the second term, we will see the direction in which we are able to take things.”

For instance, in the health sector, he said his administration has been able to increase the number of health training institutions from 34 to about 95 so that more health professions can be trained.

With energy, Mr Mahama said Ghana will become energy sufficient by the end of 2017, President John Mahama has said.

According to him, with the commencement of work on the Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme (TEN) fields in addition to expected generation from the Offshore Cape Three Points (OCTP) fields being operated by Italian energy firm Eni to complement gas production from Atuabo, more than 300 million standard cubic feet of the product is expected to be produced to generate power in excess of the country’s needs.

Ghana is coming out of a four-year crippling power crisis that led to a severe load management, job cuts and collapse of businesses.

However, with the situation easing since the beginning of 2016, President Mahama has said his administration is consolidating the gains made with the production of more gas for thermal power generation to usher the country into an era of energy security.

“We are going into the era of energy security…the period where we can suffer no such reversal…from 2017,” he said.

“With the TEN field, sometime next year we should see about another 70 million standard cubic feet of gas coming into Atuabo and then [by] end of 2017, the Eni field will start, and sometime in 2018 we should have 150 million standard cubic feet of gas.

“By end of 2017, we should be energy-sufficient. By end of 2018, we should have excess power to be able to export that power.”

He explained to Paul Adom-Otchere that Ghana’s “total subscription” in the West Africa Gas Pipeline is 120 million standard cubic feet, but with the Eni alone producing 150 million standard cubic feet, Ghana is going to get “much more gas than we have subscribed to… so, we’ll have enough gas to power our thermal plants. We’ll even still need additional gas if we can get it and so all the other work that is going on is important towards making sure that we have enough gas,” the president said.

Eni and TEN, Mr Mahama continued, will give a combined 300 million scf of gas which should “produce another 2000MW of power in addition to what we are producing already”.

Ghana is generating 2000MW of electricity, and the additional generation will take Ghana’s production of power to 4000MW, a figure President Mahama has said is “far more than Ghana needs”.

With education, he said his government is determined to complete all the 200 Community Senior High Schools he promised in the lead-up to the 2012 elections. He said his government has also done a lot of infrastructural development which will shore up Ghana’s economic development and growth.