A GNA Feature by PATRICIA AKPENE TEGBE-AGBO

Accra, March 19, GNA - Some drug pushers numbering over 35 who carry out their nefarious activities within the Community One Site Two in the Tema Municipality have registered their displeasure with the Assembly Man for the area for causing financial loss to their pockets.

According to them, business has gone so low for the past two to three months following the decision of the Asembly Man and some other opinion leaders at the site's to permit the Good News Evangelical Mission International Church to rehabilitate some of their customers.

The drug pushers, who are alleged to deal in cocaine, heroine and marijuana among other drugs said if nothing was done about the immediate return of their customers (the addicts) they could be totally out of business which could also spell disaster for the residents.

Mr Issah Alhassan, the Assembly Man of the area, made these nerve-chilling revelations to the Ghana News Agency when he visited the over 150 men and women, who were undergoing rehabilitation at the Kordiabe Voluntary Training Centre in the Eastern Region.

He said the Tema Community One Site Two has been widely noted for harbouring drug dealers, who carried out their illegal business without any fear of being arrested or prosecuted. This he explained was due to the fact that even if the criminals were arrested, they were only asked to pay some amount of money. "The barons quickly come to their aid within some short time and some times in a matter of hours they are back to their base", he said.

He said even those who were put before the courts come back as the cases were adjourned time and again until those following it finally lost interest adding "remember justice delayed is justice denied".

Addressing the inmates undergoing the rehabilitation, Mr Alhassan expressed his gratitude to them for accepting the challenge willingly to overcome the abuse of hard drugs, which had resulted in the decrease in armed robberies and other social vices in the area.

He recalled how some of the drug addicts were molested by their suppliers for not paying for the drugs taken on credit. With so much emotion, he mentioned a particular instance when one of them was being beaten up with belt before he got to the scene. When he enquired what was happening, the drug pusher was quick to answer that he had stolen an item. But an eyewitness whispered to him that it was a lie and that the one being beaten had taken some drugs on credit and had refused to pay for it.

He encouraged them to desist completely from the use of drugs saying; "one way you can keep away from it would be that you do not return to your ghettos at Site Two. "Cut off your friendship with your old friends who could possible lure you back to the use of the illicit drugs."

Also at the training centre to interact with the inmates were Doctor Akwasi Osei, Acting Chief Psychiatrist of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital and his team, who could not hide their excitement at the good work being done by the Good News Evangelical Mission International Church.

He said since prevention was better than to cure, it was a timely decision taken to assist the drug addicts before their situations degenerated into madness. Educating the addicts on the negative effects of drug abuse, the Chief Psychiatrist revealed that apart from the most obvious evidence of madness, men who were drug addicts could have difficulty in impregnating women as their sperms were killed by the toxics in the drugs. The women on the other hand had the tendency of giving birth to mentally retarded children.

Dr Osei warned the inmates that their lifestyles could affect even their grandchildren explaining that it had been empirically proven that grandparents who were drug addicts had some of their generations taking after them. With an empathetic tone, the Chief Psychiatrist said: "Some of you are here due to peer pressure or misinformation. You even wish to stop but that has become difficult. This was due to the fact that the drugs offer some so called satisfaction. This satisfaction could only be reached when the doses were increased with time."

The continuous intake of drugs in larger quantities results in the addicts hearing and dancing to non-existing music and landing them at the psychiatric hospital, eventually. He gave them the assurance that they were not the only people in the situation but that there were others in other parts of the country and even worldwide who had come out from drug addiction and that they too with determination and God's assistance could do the same.

The Ghana News Agency was told that the Good News Evangelical Mission International came into being as a result of a revelation, God made to the General Overseer, Rev. Godson King Akpalu on 5th May 2005. Rev. Godson King Akpalu hails from Dzita, fishing and farming town in the southern part of the Volta Region of Ghana.

Rev. Akpalu had earlier spearheaded the formation of the Darkuman E. P. Church. He actually started the church as morning devotion from his living room in Darkuman from 1991 up to 1996 when it groomed into a fully-fledged vibrant church. Rev. Akpalu was the kingpin around whom everything about the establishment and running of the Darkuman E. P. church revolved. However, because he was more at home with the charismatic way of worship, he always found himself going against the accepted mode of worship of the E. P. Church, his mother church.

He eventually had to abandon ship to establish the Global Evangelical Church. Rev. Philip Steele, an American evangelist, gave him pastoral status recognition at an ordination service in Accra at the Victorious Life Church on 14th December 2003. This event led to misunderstanding among the elders/priests of the District Presbytery of the E. P. Church. Eventually, Rev. Akpalu had a revelatory call to begin the New Movement, which has developed into its current form.

Thus The Good News Evangelical Mission International was started on 6th November 2005 in the founder's house in East Darkuman, where the church still holds all its church services. Its headquarters and offices are housed in the same premises. The mission statement of GONEMI is: "To Bring Total Salvation to All Flesh in Absolute Truth." Its Motto is "All Flesh Shall See the Salvation of God" (Luke 3:6); and its aims and objectives are: -

To bring the Good News of the Kingdom of God to every human society, or to bring the saving grace of Jesus Christ to the un-reached through the formation of house fellowships, home cells and small groups. From which local assemblies shall be formed. This structure would continue to be built from the area, through district; regional and finally to the national level. The Good News would also go across the borders of Ghana.