Prof Ransford Edward Gyampo, Associate Professor at the University of Ghana has described mallams that advertise quick money on television as “poor and dilapidated”.
According to him, Ghana as a society do not have any national socialization and orientation on the ideals of hard work, therefore, the influx of spiritualists on TV are ways in which the country advertises lazy quick ways towards riches.
Discussing the killing of the 10-year-old Ishmael Mensah Abdallah by two of his friends in Kasoa, the Political Science lecturer stated that, because the majority of the population are ignorant, “we are unable to see through whoever is taken that advertisement and we ponder to it”.
“It is a truism that in our part of the world, there is no national socialization and orientation on the ideals of hard work, rather, we turn to advertise lazy quick ways towards riches.
“And so, you tune into a television [channel} and a very poor mallam sits down there to tell you that bring XYZ and we’re going to make you rich. Very poor dilapidated looking mallam sits down there and advertises riches,” Ransford Gyampo said on Starr Chat on Wednesday as monitored by GhanaWeb.
He explained that because such practices have been with the Ghanaian society for a very long time, children are learning ways of getting quick money without working hard.
“The other issue is that they are aware that their seniors, elderly brothers and sisters are done with school without jobs, and so if there are no jobs for the graduates then mallams will proliferate spiritualism…,” he said.
He noted that the quickest way to get money in Ghana “is to get into politics or be a spiritual pastor or go into this fetish or juju...because everybody knows that it’s difficult to find work to do after school”.
The two suspects who committed the murder, Felix Nyarko, 16 and Nicholas Kini, 18, were victims of people who have been paying attention to fraudulent TV personalities.
The two, per the police charge sheet, admitted that they killed the 10-year-old Ishmael by hitting his neck with a club.
This was after luring him into an uncompleted building under the guise of selling him a video game at Lamptey Mills, a suburb of Kasoa in the Central Region.
This development has incensed a large segment of the Ghanaian society who are calling for an end to the appearance of spiritualists and Mallams on television who promise unreasonable get-rich-quick avenues for the unsuspecting youth.
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