The immediate past Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Rt Rev Prof Professor Emmanuel Martey deserves a national award for rejecting a $100,000 bribe as well as a V8 and a Trassacco Valley mansion from unnamed politicians who wanted to buy his silence, the Movement for the Kingdom Image (MFKI) has said.

According to MFKI, Prof Martey “has built a genuine and blameless reputation for himself”, a situation which “makes him a role model to many ministers of God who seek heaven, not wealth”.

The comments come at a time that Prof Martey has suffered backlash from a section of the Ghanaian public and particularly from the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) for claiming at a press conference on Tuesday, 30 August, that a party attempted bribing him with the goodies but he rejected the temptation.

Immediately the clergyman made those comments, a former Public Relations Officer of the Presbyterian Church, Dr Emmanuel Osei Akyeampong, contradicted him saying: “On July 28, 2013, around 8:15pm, he invited me to the office of one of the leading opposition parties, not the party of the government. When I got there he had received the $100,000 and a V8 he claimed to have rejected. And he gave me $50,000. I am speaking on authority that he received the money.”

However, a statement issued by Osempakani Kaakyire, President of the MFKI, said: “Rev Martey is an icon of holiness and the fear of God; therefore, all evildoers want to … tame him from his outspoken manner. We the Movement for the Kingdom Image want to state that we are proud of the man of God, Rev Martey, and will continue to support him and urge him on since darkness has nothing to do with light. The evildoers will continue to harass him but we are solidly behind him.”

The statement added: “Ghana is sick and definitely we need great men of God like Prof Martey to lead the people of God to the kingdom. Finally, we want to assure the people that God will not forgive those who are unduly insulting the man and calling him names.”