In a society where very feeble and powerless old ladies can be beaten to death based on the most bizzare, unfounded and baseless accusation that they possess spiritual powers to destroy young and energetic people from achieving their aspirations, any baseless lies could be swallowed as the truth.

The gullibility of our society in accepting any trash as a matter of truth promote lies as a very potent weapon of mass destruction. Speaking the truth about situations and people forms part of the mores and culture of our people.

Our society cherishes very high moral standards to ensure that spoken words are sacrosanct because they have to meet the ethical criteria of truth and telling lies about somebody without any evidence is regarded as a serious offence. Speaking the truth about people and situations is regarded as a hallmark of a person with self-respect and integrity.

Lying against somebody is regarded as a social crime and people who are tagged as liars lose the respect of society. They are regarded as dangerous people in society because a lie can destroy a person forever. Some innocent people have been imprisoned for offences they never committed.

Today, such important moral standards of our society are been eroded and the use of lies to tarnish the hard-earned image of people is fast becoming an acceptable normal human behaviour because our people no longer adhere strictly to the norms and ethics of our society that reward speaking the truth.

This makes our generation gullible in believing everything that is churned out from people with no conscience and integrity. Politicians exacerbate the situation in a competition of slander. Our political contest has become “ a race to the bottom” where the most belligerent and foul-mouthed deviants reap political benefits especially when the political chicanery is supported with money.

So those who know the effectiveness of lies, resort to the use of the deadly tool to pull their opponents down. Some individuals have mastered the skill of lying to the point of perfection. Such people who have become adepts in lying do it to the point of perfection and they never get exposed and even when they are close to been exposed, they take refuge in “your word against my word “ thus leaving a loose end of an unresolved puzzle.

In my stint with underground mining, I came across an interesting popular jargon of the underground miners that “Konkonsa Kyen Aduro” translated as “Lying or gossiping about somebody is more potent and destructive than a magical curse”.

This sums up the power of lies.

Lies have been used effectively to bring down powerful African politicians who loved their nations and were committed to the building of independent and strong economies to prevent their countries from becoming perpetual appendages of the exploitative global economic order.

Christianity has a vivid example of how Judas Iscariot who was one of the trusted original twelve disciples of Jesus, betrayed him to the Jewish Sanhedrin with a kiss and was paid 30 pieces of silver to become the most notorious traitor in religious history who caused Jesus Christ to be tried and killed on fabricated lies.

The interesting part of how Judas has become the most notorious traitor in a scheme of lies against Jesus Christ is that Judas could not enjoy his reward from the dirty work he performed because he felt so guilty after performing the dirty job to the extent that he had to throw the 30 pieces of silver away and committed suicide.

The difference between Judas Iscariot, the notorious traitor in religious history and today’s liars and traitors is that while Judas Iscariot had some modicum of conscience which made him feel guilty for what he did.

Unfortunately, the traitors and liars of our time do not seem to have any conscience that would prick them to feel guilty of being liars and traitors. They rather feel proud of using unethical means to achieve their destructive agenda. They are sometimes glorified as “smart people”.

This means that the Judases of our time are more vicious than their grandmaster Judas Iscariot. A law of propaganda often attributed to the Nazi Propagandist Joseph Goebbels states that “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”.

Know the destructive power of lies and prepare yourself for repeated lies against you in line with the law of propaganda as propounded by Joseph Goebbels as you climb the ladder of success. But the potency of the venom of lies turns into harmless doses of poison which helps the target who is well fortified by truth and a clear conscience to develop immunity against future attacks. In such situations, lies lose its destructive power to become harmless paper bullets.