Aflao Traditional Council offers sacrifices to stop coronavirus

Traditional priests in Aflao have offered an animal sacrifice to deities of the land to expel "evil spirits" believed to be responsible for COVID 19.

The rituals were centred at the three entry and exit points in the area - Kpoglu Border, Beat 9, Aflao Border and ended with the slaughtering of a goat to the ‘dulegba’ (deity of Aflao) near the palace of Torgbui Fiti V, Paramount Chief of the Aflao Traditional area.

The rituals, which the priests termed elimination of diseases followed earlier public consultations of deities in the Traditional Area to ascertain the cause of the pandemic.

Ghana currently has recorded 152 confirmed cases and five deaths from the disease, which has claimed thousands of lives globally forcing many countries into lockdowns.

The priests said the significance of the rituals, which involved the invocation of the gods and the ancestors was to prevent the pandemic from entering the Aflao Traditional Area, Ketu South and cleanse Ghana of the impurities, which had brought the disease.

Torgbui Dzakpata, Priest of Flimani Korku Shrine at Aflao and Koforidua, said through their divination, the gods were unhappy about a lot of things including how pouring of libation and other traditional rituals were banned from important public events and so allowed the land to be plagued with the disease.

Madam Dzifa Abla Gomashie, the 2020 Parliamentary Candidate for the National Democratic Congress for Ketu South, said it was important that the traditionalists joined their Christian and Muslim brothers in seeking the face of God to deliver the country from the pandemic.

She reminded the priests of the need to adhere to the guidelines provided for containing and preventing the disease even as they sought spiritual answers and called on the citizenry regardless of their beliefs, to accord traditionalists the due respect.

Aflao Traditional Council is the first in the Ketu South Municipality to offer sacrifices to the gods to ward off COVID-19 though the other two, Klikor Traditional Area and Somey Traditional Area had earlier consulted the deities for the same purpose of cleansing the land.