Mensa Otabil ‘jokers’ claims challenged

A Presidential staffer, Dr. Michael Kpessah Whyte, has told XYZ News, that the church is to blame for the unserious attitude of Ghanaians.

According to him, the church has failed in recent times to teach congregants to get serious about national issues and become patriotic.


Motivational Speaker Dr. Mensa Otabil over the weekend stated that Ghana has become a nation of jokers.


He wondered why Ghanaians create jokes out of very serious issues and by so doing, belittle very weighty matters.


But Dr. Kpessah Whyte told Breakfast XYZ Host Moro Awudu that the Church is partly to blame for the problem and believes charity must begin at home as far as Dr Otabil’s concerns are concerned.

“Part of this problem is largely blamable on the Church…when I was a child the Church was one of the places where good citizenship is formed, it is one of the places where your sense of rightness and wrongness and being a law abiding citizen is formed but today that cannot be said of the Church arguably”.


“It is good that Mensa Otabil is raising this argument and it is being raised on the pulpit and it also means to me that the Church must take up the moral challenge and reposition itself in a manner that would complement the efforts of state actors, policy makers, civil societies of academics so that we do not just all move as individuals in parallel and operating in our silos but rather as people who are working in a consented effort moving towards a convergence point that would advance a socio-economic development,” Dr. Kpessah Whyte said.


Dr. Kpessah Whyte also disagreed with criticisms concerning President Mahama’s use of jokes during his state of the nation address.


Dr Lloyd Amoah had said the President, by so doing, reduced the address to standup comedy but Dr Kpessah Whyte said Dr Amoah’s conclusion has no basis.