From some YouTube videos that I have watched, and from what I heard a certain fetish priest say about the so-called Bishop Obinim, I am persuaded that he is simply a noisy charlatan.

He claims to possess the ability to turn into snake, dog and all sorts of animals to bite or hound people, especially his enemies. He claims Jesus is his godfather. He asserts when Jesus, his godfather, turns into a lion or a tiger, he turns into a dog or a snake. While he nonsensically claims to have these powers which are anyway completely false, if not the hallucinations of a confused person, we still do have some Ghanaians, especially his unenlightened church members, who believe his presumed prowess without an iota of doubt.

All his healing abilities, as captured on video and placed on YouTube are absolutely fake.

This young man calling himself a Bishop and a man of God has more in his closet to rather make him a man of the devil.

In less than a week ago, I heard a fetish priest in the Ashanti region grant an interview to one of the numerous FM radio stations in Kumasi. His name has just escaped my mind. He said that he is rather the godfather to Bishop Obinim but not Jesus Christ as he claims. This is because he gave Obinim some juju to go to Tema to drive away a currently Kumasi-based pastor who had gone before him to Tema.

It is from what he did for him that Bishop Obinim has been able to establish himself in Tema as a very prosperous, but loud-mouthed pastor, he said. The fetish priest seemed fed up with Obinim's never ending but increasing misconducts. He is a liar, insolent and violent; the fetish priest seemed to say.

If I were asked today to describe who is, and how I find, Bishop Obinim, I would simply say, he is a complete charlatan who is feeding fat on the ignorance, illiteracy and total laziness of his prosperity-seeking churchgoers who in this day and age of civilization, still continue to kowtow to such clearly fake pastors and prophets.

For lack of knowledge, my people perish, so the bible has God saying. If his congregation and all those that visit him will take time to read and understand the bible, they will realise that Obinim, although God's creation, he is working hard and around the clock to gather followers for Satan. By their fruits, ye shall know the fake prophets, the bible says.

I deplore the attitudes of Ghanaians seeking the face of God through prosperity. This is why every Tom, Dick and Harry, has now turned into fake man of God. These Ghanaian Men of God are only ripping off unsuspected people. Their churches have become factories to mint money.

Look at the underlying two true episodes to advise yourself if you were a miracle-seeking churchgoer.

Several years ago, one Ghanaian pastor called "Apaa Life" came to London on his way from America to Ghana. He organised evening church services where many miracle cum prosperity-seeking Ghanaians attended. During the church service, he pulled out some bull's horn ("nantwie abeben") like the one used by one Yaw Amankwaah in those days in Kumawu. When the late Yaw Amankwaah, a native of Beposo but who was often found in Kumawu blew his bull's horn that made exactly the following phrase, "Yaw Amankwaah eei, faaho diee ede oo!" children would happily gather around to hear him blow harder into the bullhorn.

Apaa Life would tell his fellow pastors who had invited him over, "Look what I am going to do. I shall make all the congregations fall asleep right now". He would blow the horn and almost everybody would fall down with some start to snore. He would then say I am going to wake them up. When he blew into the horn again, the lying-on-the-floor miracle-seekers would wake up from their temporary slumber.

During the second night service, he asked everybody in attendance to bring out all the money they had without leaving a penny in their pockets, wallets and, or purses. He asked them to put the money on the floor under their right foot. He would say, "I am going to pray over the money so that whatever you do with it will yield greater returns, without any witch able to spoil the work you do with the money"

After praying over the money as promised, he warned them not to take any of the money they had placed under their foot home but to leave everything in the church. A certain elderly Ghanaian later told his story as thus, "I had brought out all my money and could not even get one pound (£1.00) to buy myself a bus ticket home. I had to walk six miles home in a cold night. This is what Apaa Life did to me"

Apaa Life gleefully told his friends later, saying, "They think I am a fool. I have left my wife and children all by themselves in Ghana to come to London here to help them. Do they think I will allow them to donate their £1 and £2 coins? I have collected their money to pay for my fare and other expenses. I am not a fool"

Again, this same Apaa Life had earlier in the week or two that he spent in London, held consultation sessions. A certain extremely beautiful girl who had been dumped by her boyfriend visited him at his home consultations to see if he could assist her win over the absconded boyfriend.

She went to find people sitting in the living room of the house in which he was dwelling as a visitor to London. They were waiting their turns to see him. When it was the turn of the girl, she spent nearly two hours with him in the upper room where the one to one consultation was being held. Instead of telling the girl what to do to get her boyfriend back, he rather tried his luck the hardest in order to have sex with her but he failed. The girl did not allow him to achieve his licentious intents.

When they emerged from his fruitless attempts to bed her while others were sitting downstairs unsuspectingly waiting for their turn, he shamelessly said, "We have kept longer because there were difficult issues about her to be dealt with" – (na adwuma kese wo ne ho). He was lying to them. He had wanted to avail himself of the girl's desperation to eat her bearded meat but he failed.

When the then most popular London-based Ghana FM radio station, WBLS, got to know about Apaa Life's behaviour, they took to the airwaves to lambast him. They promised to ensure Apaa Life never comes to Britain to rob people as he did. Since then, that Ghanaian crook posturing as a miracle pastor has never come back to London.

Are these men of God? No, they are simply crooks plying on the ignorance of people to satisfy their insatiable greed, lust and all sorts of nonsense. All the contents of their miracle-laden videos placed on YouTube to woo over many followers are all but charlatanry.

Once, a prophet called Gilbert Deya rose up in London. He was a native of Kenya. He claimed to have 35,000 followers with his church teeming with miracle babies. All his miracles as produced on video cassettes and distributed worldwide were all fake. He fell into trouble with the British authority and his name is no longer heard. He was exposed and he is now history.

Why have I mentioned him here, one may ask? It is because I want Ghanaians to understand how these con artists turned miracle-delivering pastors and prophets do cheat us into believing in whatever nonsense they come up with.

I personally believed Pastor Deya to be a great man of God with power to let happen what others from across Europe testified about him on radio to be capable of doing. Luckily one Sammy, a Ghanaian, then unknown to me, visited my home in London on business related issue. He had come on my invitation to explain and then enrol me on to the contract of a particular telephone provider.

During our conversation when he popped around, I happened to mention this pastor and said how he is understood to be great. He laughed. When I asked to know why he was laughing, he said he did not believe that he is great with most of his alleged miracles being fake. He went on further to say it is women who make our so-called miracle pastors seem great and credible but they are not.

Sammy said he works for him as his camera/video man so he knew what he was talking about. He produced a cheque that had barely been issued to him by Pastor Deya from his pocket to prove to me the truthfulness of the point he was making. He went on to tell me how Pastor Deya is scared of him and that whatever money he asks of him, he hurriedly gives it out. Why? He did not believe him because he is his video/cameraman and possesses all the originals of his so-called achieved miracles done outside UK. He edits them to make the scenes appear credible, although deceiving as they are.

The man is scared of him because he, Sammy, privy to all his secrets and charlatanry, could cause his arrest any day any time. Following the in-depth knowledge Sammy has of his dubious activities, Pastor Deya was resigned to the caprices of Cameraman Sammy.

He asked the question, have you been to the cinema, or have you watched films on television, before? I answered in the affirmative (yes). He continued to ask, in films those people you see shot dead or are seriously injured, do you think they really get killed or injured? When I answered in the negative (No), he said so are his miracles you that see on video. I use camera techniques, cutting scenes from completely unrelated stories, joining them together here and there to make such seeming credible miracles that are placed out for public consumption. They are all not genuine but it is women who are hyping his purported miraculous achievements.

He proceeded to tell me there is too much money to gain in church services or evangelism hence he had at that time, about fifteen years or more ago, purchased TV equipment totalling £35,000. He said he was going to buy more to either team up with some Evangelical TV station in Ghana or open his own Christian TV station in Ghana because there is so much easy money to make from that particular enterprise.

Knowing very well the fake things the pastors are doing, Sammy still wanted to join that bandwagon because he wanted to make quick buck.

From the above, I conclude that all miracles done by Obinim and his likes are all not credible but deceptive. They are fake miracles when you see them on video. They are fake when you are seeing them live in church because they pre-arrange with some people to feign sick to be healed. It is all balderdash!

I am sorry to have waded into the hullabaloo over the false claims by Bishop Obinim. However, I have the obligation to be of service to my people and nation to stop innocent people from falling into the charlatanry by our modern day Ghanaian pastors.

Rockson Adofo