The African have been able to create a spirit version of their nations in which many of them live and operate.

The spirit world is a world on its own, and only those who are authorised to have access to it can see the good things it presents.

The following are some worrying trends, beliefs and practices of the Ghanaian spirit world which need urgent attention before things turn upside down.

Spiritual medical supplies have become popular in recent years in Ghana. Many pastors have become spiritual medical doctors, certified and approved in the spiritual world. They have been able to successfully create their own nations called the spirit world, where only they are able to operate. To perfect this, they have been able to convince every other person, even the most educated that they are part of that spiritual world although they are unaware of their citizenship.

Apart from the monthly taxes that are received as requirements for being a citizen of this invisible spiritual world, there are lofty promises of eternal health, which far exceeds any human medical invention. Of course, this spiritual medical treatment isn’t free. One needs physical human-created money to access such high delivered spiritual medical treatments.

Medical supplies such as highly scented, brightly coloured oils, spiritual bottled water, stickers, pens, books, fans and more recently pants have all been added to the repertoire of spiritual supplies. Most of these items are ingested into the human body with hopes of receiving quick spiritual healing.

But it is none of our business if these items have been approved for human consumption. Unfortunately, they are not. of Course, since these items were procured from the spiritual world, it follows that the food and drugs authority of the spirit world approved such items. Hence, it is no surprise that the food and drugs authority of the republic of Ghana sits and watches helplessly as these items are prescribed and administered to helpless and unsuspecting citizens who are desperate for quick solutions.

If this pattern is allowed to continue, it will not be a surprise if the food and drugs authority and all medical facilities are shut down and replaced with spiritual centres of diagnosis and treatment. For it makes no sense to have a body in charge of making sure that items for human consumption pass tests of wholesomeness before being allowed to be given to any human, sit and watch as theories of spiritism are used to outwit the system. If these theories are true, seeing how highly advanced the spiritual systems seem, why don’t we replace every system with this antidote to solve our problems once and for all.

If the food and drugs authority will continue to sit and watch as self-acclaimed men of god continue to sell supplements, drugs and other food items to unsuspecting members of society, then they should as well close their offices down so that Ghanaians know that the spirits have replaced the operations of approving consumables. And may the national health insurance system be cancelled to make way for the elaborate spiritual medical era.

DEATH THREATS

Death prophecies have become a normal phenomenon in Ghana and many who receive such messages from their creator through self-acclaimed prophets of God see nothing wrong with such messages. Rather, because of the overzealous religiosity of our current society, people who receive death threats in the form of prophesies become slaves to the subjects who offer such threats. Death prophesies are death threats and nothing less and they must be handled by the laws of the land.

This must not be allowed to continue. Elsewhere, people who issue death threats will have to face the law and answer questions. They must be ready to defend their prophesy and if anything is found to happen to the person the death prophecy was announced to, the prophet will be held liable.

That is how every serious society is governed. Death prophecies are not to be made public-for if one receives a message from god on the life of another, what is the essence of blowing such information in speakers for the whole world to hear? Even the trauma alone and the idea that one’s days have been closely numbered is enough to kill the person.

Recent studies show that people’s knowledge about a misfortune such as death, kills them faster than the real causes of the death. For example, a study was conducted by a group of scientists to find out this: ‘which kills faster, HIV or people’s knowledge of having HIV?’. Their assumption was that one’s knowledge of having the disease is likely to kill the person faster than the virus itself.

To confirm their hypothesis, a series of tests were run on many people to test for HIV.Two men were sampled for the study. One was HIV positive whilst the other was negative. However, before giving them their results, it was changed. The one who was HIV positive was given the negative result whilst the one who was HIV negative was told he had the virus.

After a few months, the person who was told that he had the HIV virus (although he was negative) showed all symptoms of HIV whilst the who had the virus showed no sign at all.

The conclusion of that study was that knowledge rather than HIV kills faster.

This study is relevant to the discussion because death threats, no matter who it is coming from has the tendency of causing premature death. Thus, those who issue death prophesies must be picked up by the law enforcement agencies in order to safeguard citizens from unnecessary panic and premature loss of lives.

If we live in a country where god only cares about telling people when they are about to die but refuses to give us solutions to our numerous problems, then we need to seriously reconsider if the African has a god (Nnamdi Azikiwe, African Morning Post).

TOWARDS A SPIRITUAL ECONOMY

It is common to see many men of god these days. Most of them are clearly frustrated individuals who have given up on life, having failed many times trying to make it in life. But before they give up, they realise this great opportunity. Many Ghanaians live in the spiritual world successfully created by some powerful people. As I mentioned, this spiritual world is a perfect place, full of every good thing one can think of. Immediately this reality becomes the source of breakthrough for these frustrated individuals who nearly gave up in life. Grabbing an old bible and a speaker, with a daily memorisation of a few words in the bible, these individuals set out to preach about the goodies of this great spirit world.

In exchange for their great services of informing you about this great place, amid promises of being able to invoke the powers of this world to your advantage, you need to pay them physical money.

So, many people long for this perfect spiritual world, so much that they are ready to forgo their hard-earned fortunes in exchange for this great place.

While doing this, the messengers of this perfect spirit world become so rich and powerful that it suggests they have no plans of going to this great place anytime soon.

The ordinary person quickly interprets this sudden riche of the man of God as blessings from the spirits-a reward for his diligent work in informing others about this great world.

It seems the brains of the common man has been successfully replaced with a spirit brain with which he thinks and analyses things.

To him, everything has a spiritual undertone. He believes that hard work is useless and only those who use their newly-acquired spiritual brains are qualified to make it both in this life and in the life hereafter.

Everything is vanity to him, so he will rather give them all up to the man of God, who stores them up for himself and his family and future generations to come. This spiritual brain seems perfect, and it is because it comes from the inner chambers of the spirit world. And so, laziness is justified and normalised and there is no point in working too hard. What are you even working for?

All is vanity. We will rather shout day and night and call for the spirits to touch the heart of a hardworking innocent rich person to come to our aid. Or better still, for a hardworking rich person to walk up to us and dash us all his riches, or better still, may the spirits cause a successful man to lose his wallet containing millions of cash for us to find.

Until then, we will keep calling on them for help, while our compatriots in other parts of the world work day and night to build their nations. And may they continue to work hard because we will soon be blessed and we will have enough money to visit their nations, to admire their creativity, innovation and handwork. We will also praise their elaborate and nearly perfect systems. But back home we will pray to our secretly found antidote who is able to transform our nation to even surpass theirs.

The African god can do it.

Redeemer Buatsi, Ghana Institute of Journalism