Pastor Mensa Otabil, Founder and General Overseer of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC), has chided authorities of the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) for what he considers a display of low level of wisdom.

He said the Kotoka International Airport, which is a major transit point in West Africa, lacks among other things, a jetway (tunnel that connects the plane to the terminal) for passengers coming off the plane.

“So anybody who arrives at Kotoka International Airport gets down in this day and age from the plane and descends; there is not a jetway. Almost every country has a jetway to protect you from the elements but in Ghana No! No! No!,” he bemoaned.

Pastor Otabil said not only does the airport lack a jetway, but its sanitary situation is also nothing to write home about.

“You go through immigration and baggage claim and you want to go to the washroom and there too no toilet roll and the water is not flushing and so you come out of the plane and your first introduction is the wisdom of the people,” he stated.

Pastor Otabil said these are issues that the application of knowledge (wisdom) can solve but it is not often so in Ghana.

“If you see rubbish by the road side and you cannot collect it; we don’t have addresses to our homes and we have to use buildings and trees as signs, it is a collective packaging of Ghanaian wisdom,” he said.

He was speaking at the special 17th anniversary church service of the ICGC Hosanna Temple, Nungua, on the topic, “Wisdom: Knowledge Is Not Wisdom.”

Explaining what wisdom entails using scriptures, Pastor Otabil stated that wisdom is not just the love or acquisition of knowledge, but rather the solutions to problems.

“So when we talk about wisdom, we are talking about solutions to problems. You can see the level of wisdom in a person by the problems he can solve or not solve so also you can see the level of wisdom in a society by the problems they can or cannot solve,” he underscored.

He also noted that every problem is a wisdom problem, adding that the challenge with Africans is that “we see problems first as spiritual.”

He continued, “I am not saying don’t pray or there is no spiritual dimension to life, but before you pray use wisdom; before you even spiritualize something, ask yourself ‘what kind of wisdom am I using to solve this,’” he urged the congregation.

He said wisdom is a principal thing but oftentimes people leave out wisdom in search of other things which cannot solve their problems.

Pastor Otabil further explained that the Bible’s attribution of wisdom in Psalm 104:24, 19:1-3, to a female signifies that it must be pursued passionately the way a man would go out looking for a woman in life.

“Go out of your way to get it; if you don’t pursue it you will not get it, your life is the manifestation of your wisdom,” he observed.