A member of the National Advisory Council of the Scripture Union, Dr Samuel Ofori Onwona has stated that he has not released any video purporting to implicate any leader of the Methodist church, in the ongoing brouhaha of Muslim students being restrained from partaking in this year’s Ramadan fasting.

According to Dr Onwona, he only released audio on the said issue and not a video at his perusal without consulting any of the people being shown in the video being circulated.

In his latest audio, Dr Onwona said someone altered his audio by inserting some pictures of the leaders of the Methodist Church without his knowledge.

“I did a clip about the problem with the Methodist school, Wesley Girls and how Muslim students wanted to fast and the school says no and a delegation of Muslims went to have a discussion on it and the Ministry of Education issued an order. It has come to my knowledge, that somebody has taken my audio. I never do any video recording, everything I do is audio in the privacy of my room and I forward it to a few WhatsApp platforms, somebody has taken the message and put on the pictures of the leaders of the Church. Please any video you see with my voice is not from me, I want to raise a serious disclaimer about this. I don’t know why somebody will do that, this is the fourth time an audio clip I have done in my room is altered,” he said.

He referred to similar incidents that have happened in the past.

“I did a clip about the pandemic, somebody took the flag of Ghana and the President of Ghana’s picture and turned it into a video as if it was the President speaking. I also did the clip on the Eco currency that France was trying to hijack the Francophone countries, somebody took that and put the picture of the late president Rawlings in the Francophone country they said this was Rawlings speaking, fortunately, African Development Bank staff saw it and said Sam this is your voice but this is not Rawlings you have even talked about the African Development Bank in it, on what basis did you do that?”

“I said no, I haven’t even seen it, so quite a few of my audio clips have been altered with and so please fellow Ghanaians, none of the people you see in the video clip was even consulted. I did this thing in the privacy of my home, in my bedroom when I saw a copy of the letter from the Ministry of Education to all the churches and as a Christian, I didn’t think it was right, so I did this thing on my own merit as a senior citizen and also as Christian.”

“So please don’t be fooled, do not be deceived, somebody is trying to turn this into something else, no person, no leader, no church leader, Presby, Methodist, Anglican, Catholic was involved in this, it was my sole responsibility in the privacy of my bedroom and I have always released audio and so please discard that thing it has nothing to do with the faces that show up,” he added.

Meanwhile, Dr Onwona has threatened to lead a campaign against the New Patriotic Party if Muslim students at Wesley Girls Senior High School are allowed to fast.

Despite his recognition of government as the financier of the schools, Dr Samuel Ofori believes it should not impose the wishes of ‘minority Muslims’ on Christians who form the majority of the country.

He warned the Minister of Education, Yaw Osei Adutwum, to stay off the matter, stressing that any move to give authorization to Muslims to fast in the school will be vehemently resisted.

However, Dr Samuel Ofori reckons the move by the government to grant special dispensation to the affected students to exercise their faith is an act that could jeopardize the harmony that exists between Muslims and Christians in the country.

He charged President Akufo-Addo to stay true to his Christian faith and not allow the students to fast in the schools.

“The fact that government is financing the schools doesn’t mean we are going to throw away our faith. We are a Christian majority. The Minister of Education has no right to make that decision without talking to the leadership of the church. The Minister of Education must rescind that decision. We’ll not tolerate that.”

“You can’t go to a Muslim school and tell them how to handle Muslims. They don’t even take many of them. Please, Mr. President, you are setting up this nation for trouble. Put your feet down. You are a Christian and we are the Christian majority, if you allow this decision to pass, we’ll organize campaigns against you and NPP,” he said.