Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, the 2024 running mate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and a former Energy Minister, has explained why the Power Distribution Services Ghana Limited (PDS) concession agreement failed.
Napo, as he is commonly referred to, revealed that the Power Distribution Services Ghana Limited (PDS) brought fake bank guarantees in the deal.
Speaking on GHOne TV, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh explained, “PDS did not effectualise did not make effective to their contracts; I was not the minister, but what I came to know, what I came to see, which has been shared as proof, was that the guarantees PDS brought were fake.
They went to the Court of Arbitration and lost. It shows you that the government was right to intervene at the time it did. If you have come to marry my daughter and I found out that the dowries you brought are fake, to take my daughter’s hand wont I come and take my daughter?”
It will be recalled that the then Akufo-Addo government, through the ECG, suspended and later terminated the concession agreement following the emergence that the payment guarantees provided by PDS were fraudulent.
PDS, following the termination, sued ECG, accusing Ghana’s power distributor of wrongfully cancelling the contract.
They asked the international arbitration tribunal to declare that the termination of the concession agreement was illegal, and also asked the tribunal to award it a judgment debt of nearly $390 million, including direct costs of about US$39.4 million, and alleged lost profits of US$351.5 million.
However, the ECG, through its lawyers, maintained that the termination of the agreement was fully vindicated and in the interest of Ghana.
The lawyer for ECG added that PDS failed to exercise due diligence in verifying the authenticity of the payment guarantees, an omission that fundamentally undermined the concession.
The international arbitration tribunal then ruled in favour of Ghana’s power distributor ECG.
The international arbitration tribunal cited that the fraudulent guarantees justified its termination of the concession agreement.
Meanwhile, President John Dramani Mahama has said that the Power Distribution Services (PDS) concession arrangement failed because of mismanagement and the pursuit of personal interests.
He noted that the PDS was an initiative to bring private-sector efficiency into the country’s electricity distribution system, but collapsed due to personal interests.
Speaking at the sod-cutting ceremony for the Multi-purpose Solar Energy Project at the Dawa Industrial Park in Agotor on Thursday, November 6, Mahama stated, “I know that there was an attempt to involve the private sector in power utility and distribution. We all remember the example with PDS. PDS was not a bad thing; it was just handled wrongly, and many people had personal interests in it. That’s why it failed. But there is something to be said for injecting private-sector efficiency into public utilities”.
Watch the video below:
“I’ll be unfair if I criticize John Jinapor (Energy Minister) because I believe after a government comes to power, we should stop politics for a year and allow the government rule out his promises based on which people voted them”. Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh a.k.a Napo. pic.twitter.com/ZvoXWNPxL6
— CHARLOTTE NICOLE 🕊 (@charllycolegh) December 18, 2025