The Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), Professor Kwame Karikari, has added his voice to the call for the arrest and prosecution of Prophet TB Joshua’s uncouth macho men who detained some journalists for hours on Tuesday.

Prof. Karikari told Adom News in a telephone interview “people cannot take the law into their own hands and maltreat journalists in that manner so the police must come in quickly and arrest and prosecute them immediately.”

The call is in line with that of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) President, Affail Monney, and that of Legal Practitioner Tony Forson.

The journalists, from MultiTV and Net2 TV, were filming the heavy human and vehicular traffic around the Spintex Road premises of TB Joshua’s Synagogue Church of All Nations when they were picked up and detained by the unruly macho men.

The journalists detained included MultiTV Joy News Channel Reporter Emmanuel Anteh and cameraman Gilbert Azu.

Anteh told Adom News they were filming the crowd and the vehicular traffic from outside the premises of the church when the macho men walked up to them and invited them to come inside the church.

“We thought they were going to help us to cover the event from inside so we followed them willing only for them to go and lock us up in a room where they had locked up reporters from NET2 TV,” he said.

He said one of the macho men tried to seize their camera and that nearly led to a fight, adding that they were held for hours till midday and it took the intervention of the police for them to be released.

After their release, one of the Communication Officials of the church called and apologized and blamed it on Ghanaian macho men hired without training to work on the bishop’s security team.

GJA said the excuse and apology of the church is lame and weak so the police must act with the ‘speed of light’ in arresting, investigating and prosecuting the culprits.

“The church knows who they are so they must give them out to the police for investigations,” GJA President Affail Monney said.

He insisted that the church would have to compensate the journalists for the unwarranted indignity visited on them by the recalcitrant macho men.

Some individual journalists who spoke with Adom News are also calling on the police to investigate what right and authority those macho men had to pick up journalists who were filming the cause of a traffic jam with an open public space and not on a private property.

Meanwhile, Adom News has learnt that officials of the Synagogue Church have invited the affected journalists to go meet with Prophet TB Joshua himself for an amicable settlement.