Corruption fight must target children — Rev. Godson-Afful
Ghana's attempt to deal with corruption will continue to face setbacks unless the country designs a programme that will focus primarily on the next generation of leaders, a United Kingdom-based Ghanaian preacher, Rev. Dr Henry Godson-Afful, has stated.
He suggested that the state must design a programme that could be used to educate children beginning with three year olds.
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He said, the country’s current approach towards the fight against corruption which focused mainly on the present generation “is a wrong approach to fighting the canker”.
“I believe that the current crop of middle-aged people and even the youth might not even be the best people to start with the corruption eradication agenda. This is because their mental reasoning has been shaped in a certain direction that will make it extremely difficult to change,” he said in an interview with the Daily Graphic.
Rev. Godson-Afful, who is also an education consultant, said no country had managed to attain all of its development goals unless the issue of corruption had been minimised or dealt with.
He is also the author of three books namely “Principles For Principal People”, “General Ministerial and Christian Ethics”, “Charisma plus Character”.
Rev. Godson-Afful noted that the fight against corruption would fail if the country continued to pursue changing the attitudes of the people who were already corrupt.
Ghana’s case
In the case of Ghana, he said, the country would need to adopt an approach where the issue of corruption would begin at the early years of a child’s education.
"Let the three-year-olds know [that] if you steal from someone's lunch box it's an act of corruption, if you cheat in the exams hall, it is also an act of corruption and if you use an illegal way to get something done, it is an act of corruption," Rev. Godson-Afful said.
In his explanation, he said, once the minds of the young generation had been developed to despise corruption and fight against
it, Ghana would then be in the right position to go a certain way to achieve its development goals.
Rev. Godson-Afful, therefore, called on the government, politicians, the clergy, religious bodies and civil society groups to rise up and help fight corruption at the early stages of life.
Character leaders
Touching on some of Ghana’s development issues, he said, part of the problem centred on the category of people elected or chosen to occupy certain key positions.
He said elsewhere, the character and integrity of people were the prime reason for them to be chosen to occupy key positions but in Ghana and most developing nations, little was placed on such “godly attributes”.
“We prefer loud people, popular and famous people who may not even have the right virtue to lead the people. In our part of the world, those who insult the more get the biggest promotion. This is very sad,” Rev. Godson-Afful said.
Ahead of the upcoming elections, he called on Ghanaians to turn their attention to leaders who had strong godly character and would adhere to the right development principles.