Charismatic Preacher Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams says some Ghanaians are abusing their right to free speech by stretching it to the limit.

According to the Christian Action Faith Ministries’ (CAFM) Founder and General Overseer, the consequences of abusing free speech could be disastrous if the misuse is not reined in.

“Any society that takes freedom for granted loses it; it turns into a state of anarchy and confusion and that is what happened in countries and nations who don’t see the value and the importance of freedom and think that freedom is free so you just say anything, do anything because we’re a free society. It leads to serious implications”, Archbishop Duncan-Williams warned.

He recalled: “Look at what happened in Rwanda when one Radio station felt that they had freedom and instigated one tribe against another tribe and within 90 days, 800,000 men and women and children were slaughtered and their bones still [lay] in the city…and President [Paul] Kagame refused to bury them [because] he said ‘if I bury these bones, the world will forget what happened and I don’t want the world to forget”.

The Rwandan Genocide in 1994 saw close to a million Tutsis and Moderate Hutus slaughtered by the Hutu Majority within a space of 100 days from April 7 to mid-July.

“That is freedom taken to the extreme and that’s what we are doing in this country”, the Charismatic Preacher warned.

He bewailed that: “We’re taking our freedom to the extreme. We’re taking our freedom to a level without a sense of responsibility and accountability”.

In an interview with the BBC’s Sammy Darko which was played back on Accra-based Power FM, Archbishop Duncan-Williams said Ghanaians must not misconstrue their constitutionally-guaranteed right to free speech as a carte blanche to denigrate others.