By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Garden City, New York

Sept. 30, 2014

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

Liberation Theology enjoins the imperative need for Christian leaders to be forthright in alerting the central government to its salaried responsibilities and obligations to the people whose electoral mandate legitimizes its functional existence. And so it comes as rather curious, if not nauseatingly absurd, to hear government shills and hirelings impugning the credibility of the Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) and the latter's right to call the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) government up on its duty to act right by the people (See "Ghanaians Losing Confidence in Mahama's Gov't - Christian Council" Starrfmonline.com 9/14/14).

For the rented NDC hacks and media, the CCG is guilty of opposition political partisanship because outspoken executive representatives like Drs. Emmanuel Martey, the current chairman of the Christian Council of Ghana and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (GA of PCG), and Kwabena Opuni-Frimpong, the CCG's general-secretary, have dared to remind the occupants of the Flagstaff House of their electioneering campaign promises, in particular the woeful failure of the Mahama posse to live up to these promises.

At any rate, whether one likes it or not, the chronic and perennial failure of Messrs. Dramani Mahama and Amissah-Arthur to ensure the prompt payment of such statutory funds as those periodically due such cardinal public establishments as the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) and the Ghana Education Trust Fund does not augur well for the rapid and salutary development of the country. It is also quite understandable that the Christian Council would be so rudely attacked by the NDC pit-bulls. 

Traditionally, the Church in Ghana and most of continental Africa has pursued a lethargic course of rhetorical and/or homilectical passivity, largely for fear of being viciously envisaged by cynical and vengeful politicians to be unsavorily dabbling in politics. And so for the most part in the recent past, Christian leaders have contented themselves, albeit wistfully, with merely praying for the godly enlightenment and longevity and good health of these leaders, even when it was glaringly evident that what these leaders needed the most from their counterparts of the pulpit was forthright criticism where the latter was inescapably called for.

Needless to say, the recent decision by President Mahama and his minions to seek a bailot from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was largely due to the gross and flagrant misappropriation of public upkeep and development funds for Mr. Mahama's 2012 presidential election campaign. In the process, funding meant for the development of the most critical areas of the nation's institutions ended up in the pockets of a few party hacks and executive operatives who unconscienably misapplied such vital funding in prejudicing the mandate of the people, in what has widely become known as "vote-buying" overtures. The end result is that legitimate power is awarded the least patriotic and responsible and competent of our politicians, while the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens live in abject penury wracked with such basic and readily preventable, and avoidable, diseases as cholera, malaria and ebola.

Indeed, it is rather inexcusably hypocritical for politicians and their hangers-on to believe that, somehow, they are unreservedly entitled to the prayerful goodwill of our religious leaders, but that the latter have absolutely no right or obligation to call them to order as may be deemed opportune and appropriate.