Otabil’s submissions: Useful lessons to learn

GENERAL Overseer and founder of International Central Gospel Church (ICGC), Pastor Mensa Otabil, last week delivering a lecture at a function to celebrate William Ofori Atta expressed his angst at the path that Ghana was moving. In that famous speech Pastor Mensa Otabil really had some harsh criticism for Ghanaian politicians and journalists.

ACCORDING to the reverend pastor, Ghana’s woes are as a result of the way politicians and the media have relegated issues of development and national interest to the background. Making his point clearer, Pastor Mensa Otabil intimated that when one tunes in his/her radio set all that is discussed on the airwaves is politics; hardly, does one hears about issues of development.

THE man of God also went on to state that we [Ghanaians] as a people have stopped thinking making inference to the point again that issues that will help grow the Ghanaian economy are not given any attention. In fact Mensa Otabil is right when he asserts that our airwaves have most often been dominated by political issues with less importance to developmental matters.

YES, Today agrees with him [Pastor Otabil], when he says that part of Ghana’s underdevelopment problems must be blamed squarely on the shoulders of politicians and journalists. You listen to radio discussions and all you hear is journalists who should be championing the course of the ordinary Ghanaian citizen defending with all their might political parties. Some of us [journalists and media practitioners] have even become spokespersons of political parties. Unfortunate!

HOWEVER, there are equally other things that Mensa Otabil makes in his submissions that we on Today could not agree with him. First, Mensa Otabil cannot say that Ghanaians have stopped thinking. There are a good number of well-meaning Ghanaians like him who are always championing the course of the average Ghanaian. The problem is that political discussions on radio have, most often, been dominated by political issues making development matters less important.

THOUGH we on this paper agree to disagree with Mensa Otabil we still believe that there are important highlights of his speech that we as a people and nation must begin to critically look at if we want to move this country on the path of development and prosperity. And those are developmental issues that will improve the lot of Ghanaians.