Galamsey, corruption, jobs: Osafo-Maafo’s explosive words on key issues

The Senior Presidential Advisor, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, has made some explosive comments about some three key issues in the country.

Speaking at the 23rd General Meeting of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana at Kwahu Abetifi in the Eastern Region on Saturday, August 19, 2023, the veteran politician expressed his dissatisfaction with a number of issues bedeviling the country.

While calling for an urgent and collaborative effort between governments and the church, Yaw Osafo-Maafo stressed the need for the issues of galamsey, corruption, and unemployment to be properly tackled.

Galamsey issues:

The former Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, said that the fight against illegal mining, which is another manifestation of corruption, has gone beyond the deployment of soldiers, but rather requires moral resetting of the country.

“Look at what galamsey is doing to the land should we allow money a few people want to make to even destroy the places of water we need to drink. There are areas that we can’t even purify the water, and where you can, we are spending about three times what we used to spend to purify the water.

"How do we go that way and is this not happening in the direct eyes of our chiefs, don’t they give these lands for the galamsey, are they not connected, are we doing the galamsey outside or inside Ghana, if it is inside Ghana are people not seeing it going on “

“People see it, people condone because the beneficiaries are many and varied. The President who once said that he is putting his presidency on the line so what is happening?

"It is not something that you need the army to solve it is a moral problem and therefore Christianity comes in what morals are we teaching,” he said.

Corruption:

On the subject of corruption, the Senior Presidential Advisor questioned the quality of the moral impact of the Church, when 72% of Ghanaians profess to be Christians.

“If there is that much decay in our body politics, the Christian community has a role to play. 72% of the population is Christianity so what kind of message do we continuously give to that population of the country, what kind of moral lesson are we able to put through this huge percentage?

"If we are not able to do anything to make certain changes then Christianity itself has a problem in terms of making our words work.”

Yaw Osafo-Maafo said the seriousness of the graft menace requires stakeholders, particularly the church and the government, to go back to the drawing board.

“I think we need to go back and visit the drawing board to see what we should do as a Christian group to influence the behavior of the system, is it that your preaching’s your moral lessons are now not effective?

"We should ask few questions, if indeed 70% of us are Christians and corruption begins to go from bad to worse what is really happening? We need to do some retrospection and as a country together with the government take certain actions to redeem the nation from corruption,” he stressed.

Unemployment:

Lamenting about the multiplicity of universities in the country today, as compared to the handful that existed only a few years ago, Yaw Osafo-Maafo said he is scared at the situation.

Recalling the days when he was the Minister of Education, and the number of options for tertiary education that existed, to what pertains now, he said that there is the need for collective efforts at ensuring that graduates from these institutions are not robbed of life-skills.

“Anytime I look at tertiary education, I become nervous. When I was Minister of Education, there were five universities in Ghana: 4 belonging to government, and one private - 5 universities. As I speak, we have 95 universities and you are talking of a period of 2005, that’s when I was the Minister of Education and now it’s grown up to almost 100.

“Training people with brain power (tertiary) but no hand skills; fundamentally, only few come out with hand skills. So, what is going to happen? It’s scary. We need to do some serious introspection about the educational system. And here, the government and the churches need to sit down at the drawing board and think again. We can’t continue like this, because unemployment is a serious problem and is becoming a security problem. We need to resolve it,” he explained.

Watch the full address Yaw Osafo-Maafo delivered below:



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