Sierra Leone Energy Minister, Kanja Sesay Resigns Over Electricity Crisis

Sierra Leone’s Minister of Energy, Kanja Sesay has tendered his resignation following weeks of electricity crises in the country, as reported by the BBC.

In his resignation letter submitted on Friday, Sesay accepted full responsibility for the energy crisis.

Subsequently, the government announced that the energy ministry would be directly supervised by President Julius Maada Bio, with assistance from two other officials.

Sesay’s resignation coincided with the government’s payment of $18.5 million to two power providers, Turkish Karpowership and Transco-CLSG group.

Sierra Leone had owed the two producers a total of $40 million.

The announcement of these payments led to the restoration of power in Freetown after two months of outages.

During this period, Freetown and other major cities like Bo, Kenema, and Koidu had experienced prolonged periods without electricity.

Karpowership confirmed the receipt of the payment, stating, “We are pleased to confirm that the electricity supply has returned to full capacity in Freetown.”

The company, which has been supplying electricity to Sierra Leone since 2018 through a floating offshore unit, had reduced its capacity from 65 megawatts to just five in recent months due to payment issues.

It had previously halted supplies to Sierra Leone in September over unpaid bills and temporarily cut power to Guinea-Bissau in October for similar reasons.

KanyiDaily recalls that the Nigerian Government recently granted temporary asylum to the former Sierra Leonean president, Ernest Bai Koroma, who faced treason charges from his successor, Julius Maada Bio.