A group photograph of dignitaries at the ceremony
CHRISTIAN GROUP, Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International (FGBMI), has launched an anti-corruption campaign dubbed, ‘Unashamedly Ethical.’
The campaign, launched at the Accra International Conference Center (AICC) on Friday, August 23, is aimed at instilling ethics, values and clean living at the work place, in public offices and in the private lives of individuals, especially Christians.
Delivering the keynote address, Justice Theodora Georgina Wood, former Chief Justice and member of the Council of State, stated that corruption has not only eaten deep into our body polity, but has trapped millions of citizens in “grinding” poverty, having severe adverse effects on the nation’s development.
She bemoaned that attempts to curb the menace has yielded barely any results.
“Even more disheartening is the fact that the country’s attempts at taming this monster [corruption] does not appear to have made any headway,” she bemoaned.
She said the Christian body has a role to play in the fight against corruption as much as the State has.
“Fighting this canker is a shared responsibility. The State has a role to play, so does the body of Christ”, she stressed, adding that, “this evidently places a burden on the Christian community to curb this menace.”
She noted that the corruption phenomenon “undermines democratic governance and national development, and militates against the peace and stability of our nation” thus the campaign is intended to motivate all Bible-believing Christians to genuinely and firmly commit to serving the Lord and the country by unashamedly taking a bold and open stand against all acts of impunity, corruption and unethical behaviors in both their public and private lives.
In her remarks, Appeal Court Judge, Justice Gertrude Torkornoo, disclosed that, Ghana, in 2018, placed 140th out of 189 countries and territories after studies on human development were carried out.
The cause of the extremely slow rate of human development, she said, is the “lack of identification of strong values and ethical contents around which this nation can run.”
“Thus dishonesty in public life, stealing and lying have become behaviour that we have considered culturally normal – translating into the billions that the nation is supposed to lose from corrupt practices and the degrading of every form of resource”, she posited.
President of FGBMI Ghana, George Prah, also said the campaign is targeted at people placed in the market place “to begin to do something about this scourge of corruption, unethical values and lack of integrity” which have eaten deep into the fabrics of the country
He said: “We identify it
as being something that cannot be dealt with only from the top as has often been proposed. It can only be dealt with when the persons who have been perpetrators or victims of the menace at some point in time take a stand to fight it.”
By Nii Adjei Mensahfio