The youth have been challenged to rise up to their civic responsibility and show greater interest and actively support the fight against bribery, corruption and other social vices.

Their active participation in this direction, according to Mr Ekow Kwansah Hayford, Member of Parliament for Mfantseman, was crucial to guiding a good future and ensuring responsible citizenship to promote transparency, accountability and ultimately bring about the desired development in the country.

“As youth, you must come together and collectively expose wrongdoers in society. Remember the future you wish to see starts from you playing your civic responsibility well and rising to be agents of change,” he said.

Mr. Kwansah Hayford was addressing some youth of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community at the 38th annual rally of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association (Majlis Khudam-ul-Ahmadiyya) in the Mankessim Zone.

The three-day annual rally which was on the theme “God Fearing, the remedy to corruption” aimed at working towards improving the spirituality, moral, social and physical development of members to increase their faith in Allah.

According to the MP, the youth who were the future leaders and beacon of hope, must not reinforce the status quo of corrupt practices, while they prepared to take up leadership at various stages in the future.

He, therefore, stressed the need to build integrity among the youth by imbibing in them good morals and ethics to completely kick out the canker of corruption from the Ghanaian society.

He further urged the youth to take advantage of the free SHS initiative to educate themselves adequately.

Murabi Ibrahim Arkoh, Mankessim Circuit Missionary of the Ahmadiyya Mission, admonished religious leaders to use their platforms to preach against corrupt practices so as to make it unattractive for members to engage in.

He noted that given the great reverence that religious leaders command in the country, their best contribution to the nation would be to constantly preach against corruption for their members to serve Ghana with clean hearts.

He stressed the need for religious leaders to contribute their quota to shaping the character of their members, who occupied public offices to stay away from corruption. As part of this year’s rally, the members earlier undertook a blood donation exercise at the Saltpond Government Hospital and embarked on a cleanup exercise at the Mankessim Market and some principal streets of the town.