The Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference (GCBC) on Thursday said the recent murder of the 10-year old boy at Kasoa in the Central Region, allegedly carried out by two teenagers, calls for an urgent intervention to avert further occurrences in the future.
“We live in a country where wealth is celebrated and elevated above everything, where the rich are worshipped without questioning the source of their wealth, where good leadership qualities are equated to donations, where individuals believe they have to make money by hook or by crook, and where the end justifies the means,” it said.
“The horrid action of these teenagers should serve as a wake-up call for us to find out what has gone wrong with us as individuals, as a people, as a nation and why we are where we are today. Perhaps, we have lost our moral compass as individuals, a people and a nation.”
A statement issued and signed by the Most Reverend Phillip Naameh, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Tamale and the President of GCBC, copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra, said it was important to see those developments as a national security threat and act speedily to deal with them.
It called on all major stakeholders, especially the regulators of media space, to clamp down on activities of those fraudulent spiritualists, mallams, and pastors among others who continued to propagate evil and the ‘get-rich-quick’ activities on the television stations and social media platforms.
The statement said it was sad to hear that the decision of those teenagers to kidnap the victim to a spiritualist for rituals was based on some audio-visual content they had watched on television to get rich within a short period.
“It is time for us to begin to chart a new path for ourselves as individuals, as a people and as a nation, if we intend to build a country with people who appreciate the need for hard work, honesty, values, integrity and the desire for genuine acquisition of wealth as opposed to the current situation of thirsting for quick wealth by hook or crook,” it said.
“As we look forward to a possible solution to our current situation, we commit the soul of the young Ishmael Mensah Abdallah to the mercy of God and pray for consolation for the parents and the entire family and for divine guidance on these and many other misguided teenagers in our modern world.”
Ishmael Abdallah was reportedly murdered by two teenagers on Easter Saturday at Kasoa.
The two suspects have been arrested and assisting the Police CID in investigations.
