'Don't vote for candidate who engages in campaign of insults'

September 29, 2008 pg 17

Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru

AN Anglican Priest, Rev. Father Dr Emmanuel Oddoye, has charged Ghanaians not to vote for any presidential candidate who engages in a campaign of insults, character assassination and lies.
“We will need to support politicians who run a decent campaign devoid of lies and other untruths and who do not speak ill of their opponents. In so doing we would eventually support and elect a leader who will govern this nation in the knowledge and fear of God”, he stressed.
Rev. Dr Oddoye was speaking on the “Role of Christian Youth in Nation Building” at the 11th biennial diocesan delegates conference of the Anglican Young People’s Association (AYPA) at Oyibi in the Greater Accra Region.
The three-day conference was to afford the AYPA members the opportunity to review their activities for the year and draw up new programmes for the coming year.
Rev. Dr Oddoye expressed worry that for most people, politics was a dirty game and needed to be avoided, and indicated that “politics need not be dirty”.
“The question we ask ourselves is: If we allow those who play dirty to keep dominating politics, do we have a moral right to ask for a good, God-fearing leader?” he queried.
Touching on morality, Rev. Dr Oddoye bemoaned the increased indiscipline, corruption, illegal connection and nepotism in the country, and said those negative trends would defeat efforts at propelling the development of the country.
For instance, he said, some people steal electric and telephone cables, while others tap into water and electricity illegally, thus robbing the agencies that run those services of income.
Rev. Dr Oddoye said people needed to bribe public officials before they processed their documents, and noted that some public officials took 10 per cent bribe of the contract sum before a contract was awarded.
The result, he said, was that the contract would not be well executed as the contractor had 10 per cent less to work with.
He said the creeping corruption in the country was the result of covetousness and pressure from spouses while in the case of young women, it was the desire to outdo one another.
He said tribalism and nepotism were two ills which were causing a lot of havoc to the country, with family members getting unmeritorious job offers.
Rev. Dr Oddoye lamented how some ‘big men’ demanded sexual favours from female job applicants and “get away with it”.
He called for justice for all in all spheres of life be it in the home, church, work and guilds.
Rev. Dr Oddoye said Ghana needed manpower with the correct moral fibre and dedication to duty, whether in the civil service, public service or private sector.
He, therefore, challenged the Christian youth to be at the forefront of efforts to clean up the system, adding: “Do not corrupt yourselves and when you can, try to prevent others from being corrupt”.
The Diocesan President of the AYPA, Mr Charles Pappoe, said the development of the youth in the Anglican Church was dear to the AYPA, and asked that the youth be put at the epicentre of any activity.
He expressed the hope that at the end of the conference, members would be able to find the niche in which to place the youth in the broad effort of contributing their quota to the development of the nation.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Highway Authority, Mr Eric Oduro Konadu, who chaired the function, asked the youth to make judicious use of their time and not to be daunted by any obstacles in their lives.