The Obinim whipping saga: Parenthood and parenting crisis in Ghana
I have been closely monitoring the media sportlight on the Founder and General Overseer of the International God’s Way Church (IGWC), Bishop Daniel Obinim, for whipping two young persons in the full glare of the church members for engaging in pre-marital sex as teenagers.
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The video of the horsewhipping of the duo has gone viral and a lot of people have condemned Obinim with various individuals calling for his arrest and subsequent invitation by the police for questioning.
With this background, I will like to share my opinion as a student of sociology, an educationist and a social worker.
Ghana as a society is undergoing parenthood and parenting crisis. Parenting deals with being the biological parent. It entails pregnancy and birth. Parenthood exist for as long as the parent or child is alive. Parenting is raising a child to be a responsible and acceptable member of society. Parenting could be undertaken by adults who might not be the biological parent of the child. This practice is common in the cities, towns and villages in Ghana. Some people refer to such children as houseboy/girl, maid, among others.
In the Akan-speaking part of Ghana, the caretakers refer to them in the local dialect as "me ne no na eti" when visitors enquire about the family of such children. This explicitly and implicitly sends the signal that the child is not part of the caregiver’s family.
Although the self-professed Angel of God is not the biological parent, he is playing the role of social parent. The inability of the biological parent to undertake the parenting role is the nemesis for child abuse, head porterage (kayayie), streetism and child delinquency in Ghana and most of these abuses go unreported, unnoticed or intentionally swept under the carpet to avoid public debate or to escape the law. Such children undergo sexual abuses, including rape and defilement.
Social parents, including Bishop Obinim, lack the emotional and psychological capacity to undertake parenting role, hence the disciplinary measures they adopt are demeaning and cause psychological, emotional and physical bruises to the child. Such people always have a different method of disciplining their biological children. They are magnanimous to their biological children and provide them with the required emotional, psychological and physical attention for the development of the child. Although some biological parents with emotional instability could be callous, I have the firm belief Obinim will not discipline his children in front of the church.
The method of discipline adopted by Obinim is demeaning and abusive with the possibility of creating a psychological and emotional scar in the lives of the young people which will require psychosocial treatment. Society will also label and stigmatise these young people as promiscuous, which would affect their future career, marriage and self-confidence.
On the way forward, all stakeholders for child security, especially the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, should realise the simmering parenting crisis in Ghana and West Africa. The ministry should develop database of all people living with children who are not the biological children for monitoring just as it is done for adopted children.
In addition, social structures and interventions should be established to assist such social parents in sensitisation, capacity building, guidance and counselling to bridge the vacuum biological parents failed to fill. This will strengthen the institution of social parenting to check child abuse and promote the well-being of children in Ghana and Africa.
"Deviation of policy on child abuse is a poison for posterity".
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