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CHRAJ: Religious leadership should target corruption fight

Mercy Larbi, the Ashanti Regional Director of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), has expressed worry about religious leaders for laying little emphasis on the fight against corruption as a sin but rather focusing a chunk of their efforts on preaching against fornication and its related sins on their pulpits.

She explained that the country continues to grapple with high incidence of corruption when the two dominant religions, Christianity and Muslim, which hold 95 per cent of the citizenry had doctrines that frown on corruption.

Madam Larbi expressed the worry when she spoke at an interfaith-led anti-corruption conference organised by the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) to commemorate International Anti-Corruption Day which was marked on the theme: ‘United against corruption’ and harped on the roles that religious leaders have to play as part of the 10- year National Anti Corruption Action Plan (NACAP).

 She pointed out that among Muslims and Christians, corruption was a sin and questioned why religious leadership was not preaching corruption and always preaching against fornication and challenged them to use their platforms to preach against corruption and corruption related issues because they had key roles to play in NACAP,” she insisted.

Reverend Dr Kojo Osei-Wusu, the President of the Coalition of Christians Against Corruption, noted that the clergy could only vote more time to preaching against corruption if the leadership of the fold appreciated the magnitude of the canker and queried whether they believed that corruption is a sin and reading the same Bibles.

“If you are leading people who are corrupt and you are not leading them to leave that kind of life, then maybe you don’t understand what you are doing,” he decried.

Osei Bonsu Aning, the Zonal Project Officer for the GII, disclosed that beyond training, an anti-corruption training manual to aid religious leaders undertake focused campaigns against corruption in their churches and mosques had been published for their perusal.

He indicated that the Initiative had already shared with the religious leaders and contacted them to use that as a reference whenever they were discussing, or leading the crusade.

“We are expected to do follow ups on the various religious bodies which attended and pledged to assume the roles of anti-corruption crusaders among their congregants,” Mr Aning said. -starrfmonline.com

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