The President should stay away from religious and traditional tribal leaders. Period!

By: Kwaku A. Danso

Recent utterances by religious groups and leaders, some predicting economic rise and some predicting soccer or football wins and losses seem utterly backwards in thinking and I want to strongly warn and caution our government leadership against these. Please stay away from these simply-minded thinking that some Manna from Heaven is coming down the pipeline. The late President Atta Mills was alleged to have consulted with religious leaders in Nigeria and Ghana. To some of us even at the age close to the late President, and most of our young generation, it is a disgrace to our nation. Let us leave our religions and tribes at home when it comes to government duties and the nation of Ghana. It is time we learned. Only backwards human organizations stick to tribal distinctions forever. You can’t be enjoying use of cell phones, made with technology and knowledge from the same inner God we all worship in our own ways, and thinking some religious person is going to revive your economy. Absolute nonsense!
Most people are afraid of criticizing religious organizations and their leaders, pastors, bishops and archbishops; and I think that is wrong! Most traditional chiefs and pastors are simply trying to seek favor of the President for self aggrandizement, bloated egos. Everybody is trying to put food on the table. The Presidents we have also honestly have deliberately embraced this mindset for their self interest come election time favors. In fact some of these religious and traditional leaders have been known to be frauds and quacks! If our elected President cannot pray for himself, it is my strong opinion that he is not strong enough of a person to be our President. Resignation is not a disgrace and the President if he finds his spirit not adequate enough for the job, can resign with dignity. It is my opinion and recommendation that any Minister or public officials who tries to use religious or spiritual and unproven explanations to explain our economy or other failures should be fired from his job for practicing fraud and quackery and unless they can prove and validate their claims.
I think we should have a very clear declaration of separation of religion and our Constitution and the right of our people to worship as they please but refrain from taking taxpayer funds by any President for religious ceremonies and promises which becomes politics. President Mahama will do far better by staying away from any of these religions, Christianity, Islam, or any others, except on weekends for his personal self and family. I personally would NOT like my taxpayer funds to go towards travelling to greet any Imam or Bishop or Fetish or Voodoo or other religious leaders. No!! Forget it!! Forget about traditional Chiefs also. Most of them may not even pay their fair share of taxes either when they collect land sales revenue. There are no constitutionally elected traditional or tribal leaders. President Mahama, like all politicians, is simply bending down to try and gain some favor so that come election time, these traditional leaders, be they tribal nature or religious, will favor him.
National prayers and all that are backwards in thinking. Nations these days are run by laws and rules. The President should study the rules and laws and help guide and inspire change that will provide better living conditions for our people, and not through prayer camps! The President, in my mind, is wasting a lot of paid time meeting people and shaking hands, and it must stop!
The President and his Ministers have the duty to spend more time to study problems, meeting with experts, engineers, accountants, auditors, listen to presentations and discuss solutions that affect all of us in the Agricultural, Health care, Economic, Education, Transportation and other areas of our lives in Ghana. So far the leadership performance is not considered adequate as our research had pointed out more than 70% of our people considered our leadership performance unsatisfactory or highly unsatisfactory (Danso, K.A., 2007). I strongly advise Dr. Raymond Atuguba to convey this message to the President. He should inform Chief of Staff Prosper Bani also to cut the many visits from religious and traditional leaders out. At a time when electricity transformers for only $5-10 million could provide reliable electricity for East Legon and Madina and Adenta and so forth, the President should spend his time listening to new ideas and forget about shaking hands with village or city tribal or religious leaders who want favor of him. No! Cut it out!!

Thanks,

Dr. Kwaku A. Danso