Prof Badu Akosa Writes – Poverty And Hopelessness Is What Drives People Into The Hands Of Charlatans Like Obinim

Former Director General of the Ghana Health Service and avowed Nkrumahist, Professor Agyemang Badu Akosa, has written on why he believes the likes of Obinim flourish in this country.

It’s a really simple formula, one which GhanaCelebrities.Com editor Chris-Vincent and myself have enumerated on many times – research shows the most religious nations in the world are often the worst to live in, whilst the most irreligious are often the best.

There is a reason Karl Marx described religion as an opiate.

Writing in the Daily Graphic, Professor Badu Akosa wondered why so many grown men and women would be behaving as Obinim’s followers are doing, be willing to follow him anywhere even sometimes when it looks like he’s objectively taking advantage of them.

He theorised that in a country where everything is going to hell, the cost of living is high and there seems to be no hope, people turn to charlatans like Obinim for solace.

“All over the country, there are so-called men of God who have built occult status like Obinim and are virtually worshipped, some of them foreigners who on a weekly basis are changing cedis into US dollars for export. People will do anything for them in exchange for the elusive word “hope”.’ Professor Akosa wrote.

“For a country where superstition has more or less become a belief, people are held close as “hostages” accepting everything they are told without raising a finger.

In the “Trials of Brother Jero,” a play by the Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, the man of God would divide people into four groups; young women with no children are presumed as looking for children and or husbands, young women with children must have their little ones protected from evil spirits, older women come to seek protection for their grandchildren or daughters without children whose wombs have been seized by the devil and the men who attend the church mostly have no jobs and need one.