Don’t be silent on issues of corruption — Rev. Prof. Martey
The former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Reverend Professor Emmanuel Martey, has called on Ghanaians, particularly the clergy to rise up against corruption in the country.
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He said the clergy had remained silent on the issue of corruption and had refused to speak against it for fear of insults.
Besides the fear for criticisms and insults, he said some pastors had engaged in acts that were contrary to the word of God as such “they cannot speak against corruption among political leaders or against government officials because they are not much different themselves. They have, therefore, lost all prophetic voices.”
Need for prophetic voices
Rev. Prof. Martey made the call when he spoke on corruption at a public lecture last Friday.
The lecture was organised by the Christian Service University College (CSUC) in Kumasi.
Rev. Prof. Martey said it was time men of God let their prophetic voices be heard on the social canker.
He said prophetic utterances from the throne of God condemning evil would doubtlessly bring judgement upon wrongdoers and corrupt societies but many pastors were afraid to speak against corruption because “most of the time, guilty societies react to prophetic utterances negatively, especially with insults, and many pastors cannot withstand such insults.”
Blackmail
According to Prof. Martey, some pastors naively and innocently accept gifts that turn out to be baits or bribes “which subsequently muffle them from preaching prophetic messages with power.
“Sometime some of these so called gifts and accompanying conversations are secretly recorded and they spell doom for such pastors,” he said.
He said certain cultural practices as such gift giving and the Constitution which had invested too much power in the President had also helped to entrench corruption in the country, thus making it endemic and systemic.
“We are faced with an unquestionably noticeable menace of corruption in this country. Corruption in Ghana is not a perception, it is real. Corruption is caused by our own institutions, by our own way of life and it is having devastating effects on every aspect of societal life,” he said.
Lecture
The lecture was on the theme: “The menace of corruption in Ghana” and had the former moderator, Rev. Prof. Martey and Mr Ken Ashigbey, Managing Director of the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL), as speakers.
The Chairman of the Christian Council of Ghana, Rev. Dr Opuni Frempong was the moderator.
Causes
According to the former moderator, corruption had been institutionalised such that even those who might have the corrupt tendencies will be forced by the status quo to conform to it.
He explained that some of the practices, aside being culturally rooted, have been adopted by institutions as the norm and that made it difficult to stop.
He also cited the Constitution which made it such that the majority of ministers would have to come from Parliament. That, he said, had virtually turned the legislature into a rubber stamp institution where Members of Parliament of the party in power hardly saw anything wrong with whatever the government was involved in.