Mahama asked to be a listening Head of State

Archbishop Dr George Siezer Ofori-Atta, Presiding Archbishop of The Council of World Bishops, has called on President John Dramani Mahama, to conscientiously be a listening leader and to do “what is good, needed and right”.

He said cultivation of the habit of listening leads to the accumulation of wisdom and understanding, helps one to know the end result of what is being said, facilitates resoluteness and adherence to any resolution to its logical conclusion.

Archbishop Ofori-Atta, who made the call during the consecration of Bishop Ransford A. Asare as President of the American Regional Branch of the Council, in Minnesota in the US said the purpose of leadership is to solve problems.

“We seem to be in hard times economically; the load shedding and erratic power supply is having such a retrogressive effect on our economic activities coupled with increases in taxes,” he said.

Archbishop Ofori-Atta said if the Gross Domestic Product is high at the end of the tenure of President Mahama and the prevailing hardships linger on, his achievements may be eroded, hence the need to endeavour to solve the challenges with dispatch.

He appealed to the clergy to give the people the spiritual care that they need, adding: “People do have spiritual, material, financial and emotional problems and they do come to the church for solutions.”

“But what they seek for at times become elusive, hence, they keep on moving from one church to another in search for the solutions they need.

“This phenomenon brings to the fore the rhetorical question; what are we doing as ministers of God? For if we were to be doing the work well, all these movements would not be or would have stopped.”

Archbishop Ofori-Atta observed that the high rate of corruption in Ghana is an indictment on the clergy.

He called on the clergy to endeavour to do things orderly and decently, teaching the people the unadulterated word of God, not for material gains that have led some people to do all manner of things in order to arrive at their selfish or parochial interest, but to live Godly before God and harmoniously with each other in righteousness and love.