Joyce Aryee speaks on moral decadence
With rising cost of living and urbanisation becoming the order of the day, not many people spend quality time with their children not to talk of striving hard to inculcate certain moral values and principles which the Ghanaian society upholds.
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This challenge has led to the Ghanaian society’s slip down the road of moral decadence, the Executive Director of the Salt and Light Ministry, Dr Joyce Aryee, asserted when she took her turn on the Springboard Radio Show on Joy FM in Accra on Sunday, October 18, 2015.
Dr Aryee also known as 'Auntie Joyce', is a reverend minister and a business leader recognised for serving the nation for over 40 years in both the public and private sectors.
She is the previous Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Mines and was the first woman in Africa to have held that role. She has also held political roles in Ghana and currently the Executive Director of Salt and Light Ministries, a para-church organisation.
She said: “Where a society makes it difficult for good income to be earned, you find that both parents have to spend long hours away from home with nobody really shaping the lives of the children, as inculcating basic values and tenets becomes difficult.
“ So, I think with the difficulty in the socioeconomic space, people are realising that even to pay school fees, they have to just do what they have to do," she told the host, Rev. Albert Ocran on the weekly motivational radio talk show, the Springboard, Your Virtual University.
Contributing to discussions on the new series on building a good society, Dr Aryee, a celebrated leader, said leadership was at the heart of every society's progress and its absence at any particular time could translate into a dysfunctional society.
She described as unfortunate the growing perception among many people that those who are able to outwit society by being dubious and full of tricks were the smartest.
"By eulogising the trickery of Kwaku Ananse (a celebrated Ghanaian character in folklore), we seem to be promoting the fact that you need to use tricks, lies and so on to look smart and good.
“If you hear a Ghanaian saying that someone is smart, it means that person does the wrong things and gets away with it," she said.
On the principles that she holds dear, Dr Aryee mentioned leadership, religion, governance, arts and entertainment, which she said were at the heart of every society's progress.
On leadership, she said "I don't want us to think that when we talk leadership, we are talking of only the president, ministers and people like that, no. We are talking of proving direction."
Need for righteous revolution
Explaining further how the country lost its values, Dr Aryee said, the problem could be traced to the socio-economic pressures on people resulting from rising cost of living in the midst of economic growth.
She said it was unacceptable that the country and its citizens should trade livelihoods for good moral values.
"My heart actually aches on this and I have been toying with the idea of starting a moral righteousness crusade because I think that we need to begin to take decisions to do what is right and it is not that difficult," she said.
Linking the moral decadence to the increasing number of religious followers in the country, she said not everybody who professed to be God-fearing was indeed faithful to the tenets of God.
"I think many of us go to church but we really haven't grasped the fundamentals of that Christian faith. There are pastors who do not have a relationship with God. If they did, they wouldn’t do what they are doing," she added.
Getting it right
While dismissing suggestions that one needs to become a political leader to help correct some of the ills of society, Dr Aryee said the leadership roles she was playing were enough to help stir change in the society, emphasising that leadership needed not be political.
"I think that those who are called, who want to go and serve, not be served, are those who should be in political leadership because at the level of government, you need a certain leadership. But you also need a certain leadership that you don't have to go through partisan politics to be a leader," she said.
Making reference to Dr Mensa Otabil, the founder and general overseer of the International Central Gospel Church, Dr Aryee said he, in particular, had made tremendous impact on the society and in the country in spite of his absence from politics.
"So leadership is about affecting people positively because you stand on what is right and helping people to get there," she explained.
She bemoaned the current situation where most people were in leadership mainly for their selfish gains and not for the opportunity it afforded them to contribute to the positive improvement of the society.
On the question of whether Ghana can ever turn the corner, she replied in the affirmative, “ the life of human beings is a work in progress. There is hope for a better society and a better future.”
" I think that a time will come when leadership will want to harness our resources for the greater good of society."– GB
