ECG boss Samuel Dubik Mahama resigns

The Managing Director of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Samuel Dubik Mahama has resigned.

He is leaving the position after two years in office as managing director of the main electric power distributing company in Ghana.

He has handed over his resignation letter to the board of the ECG and gave two weeks notice.

A source has confirmed to Graphic Online that Mr Mahama cited personal reasons for the resignation and thanked the board for the working relationship and the opportunities, leading ECG offered him.

However, close sources hints that the ECG MD has been facing some challenges with the board and the staff on how he had wanted to manage the company.

The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia for instance in May 2024 detailed how individuals within the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) deliberately obstructed the government’s efforts to digitalize revenue collection processes.

The ECG has been having challenges with its prepaid meter billing system for instance for a while now with many customers complaining about going into negative balances even with the prepaid meter.

This has resulted in the company initiating moves to change meters for customers and upgrading systems.

Sources said one of the issues resulting in the differences between Mr Mahama and the board is the accounting system /software and how Mr Mahama wanted to manage the company.

Samuel Dubik Mahama started his role as MD of ECG on May 16, 2022.

Prior to that, he served as a non-executive director at ECG.

In relation to the prepaid meter billing challenges for instance, one of the reasons when customers complain about negative balances on their prepaid meter is that, there was a lost of connection between the meter and the server at ECG and therefore allowing the prepaid meters to continue to run even when credit runs out.

Anytime, customers have complained, the explanation has been that the meter continued to run and went into a negative balance because there was no connection. 

This explanation, some sources within ECG has said was not entirely the case and it had got to do with an accounting software which was recently changed.

In 2022, the Electricity Company of Ghana suffered a GH¢10.21 billion loss, worse than the GH¢1.91 billion recorded in 2021.

It represents more than 433 per cent loss in 2022 due largely to exchange rate losses resulting from the cedi depreciation and increased cost of distributing power to consumers.

In April 2023, the then Managing Director, Samuel Dubik Mahama disclosed that the company had been able to retrieve in excess of Ghc 2 billion from debt in one month following the debt retrieval exercise the company embarked upon.

In February 2024, Mr Dubik Mahama said he had stopped attending public events such as weddings and funerals because of how people tend to look at his face anytime electric power goes off.

He said when he attends events and power goes off at the event venue, almost everyone turns to look at him, hence making him feel very uncomfortable.