Audio By Carbonatix
Government says it cannot rule out foul play in last Friday’s floodlight fiasco which nearly marred a sweet Black Stars victory against Lesotho in a World Cup qualifier.
The game was suspended for well over an hour after the floodlights went off ten minutes into the second half. The Stars were leading by 4-0.
Luckily, the lights were restored and the game continued till the final whistle by which time the Stars had increased the goal tally to seven.
The president, according to his head of Communications Koku Anyidoho was "upset" with the development and initially blamed the Electricity Company of Ghana for it.
But the ECG insisted it was not to blame, pointing to the National Sports Authority.
The Information Minister Fritz Baffour issued a statement in which it called for investigation and announced a five member committee to begin investigations into the matter.
The National Sports Authority which has the oversight responsibility over the floodlights and other facilities at the various stadia, in a statement, attributed floodlights fiasco to “an electrical system failure which was beyond our control.”
Prior to the inauguration of the five member committee to investigate the matter, the ECG has conducted its own preliminary investigation and submitted its report to the Energy Ministry.
Deputy Energy Minister Inusah Fuseini told Myjoyonline.com they cannot rule out “criminal negligence.”
According to him, there are so many questions than answers on the matter.
He explained the floodlight alone was running on generator with the other lighting system on grid. However the generator developed some fault and had to be switched onto grid automatically.
“Nobody is telling us that the diesel [in the generator] got finished. They also found a loose wire hanging on the automatic switch gear; the manual switch could not function,” he said.
He stated per the report, the manual switch had not been working “long ago” adding, if the officials had attempted to switch onto the grid they would have noticed that the automatic switch gear was not working and would have known also that the manual switch had also developed some fault.
Asked if it was negligence on the part of the officials, he said “why would they be that negligent, is it criminal negligence?"
He was quick to add however that the ministry will not preempt the investigations by the five member investigative committee but was convinced “there are definitely so many questions than answers.”
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