Nii Tetteh Otu II, the Paramount Chief of Kpone Traditional Area, has reiterated calls on the National Media Commission (NMC) and other relevant institutions to sanction television stations that promote money rituals on their screens.
Nii Otu said “the things we are seeing now on TV and hearing on radio are very worrying and problematic to the extent that kids want to do money rituals”.
The issues of the powers of the media regulatory authorities hit the front pages in the past week following the murder of a ten-year-old boy by his friends in Kasoa in their bid to use him for money rituals after allegedly contacting a ritualist who they had been watching on TV.
The Kpone Paramount Chief stated during interaction with Ghana News Agency (GNA) -Tema team led by Mr Francis Ameyibor, Tema Regional Manager, when they paid a working visit to Kpone and its environs to meet leaders in the Area. The GNA-Tema Team also met the Municipal Chief Executive of Kpone-Katamanso Assembly.
Nii Otu questioned what the NMC and other state agencies responsible for sanitizing the airwaves used their budget allocations for “if they had failed to monitor, sanction and nib such broadcast in the bud before it got out of hands.
“If such ritual monies shown on TV were appropriate and therefore does not need sanctioning then why was government still borrowing from foreign countries when it could turn to the money rituals to enrich the country stressing that NMC must not be a toothless dog that does not bite”.
The Kpone Paramount Chief said; “if we can have magicians displaying monies on our TV, why can’t government call about ten of them to conjure monies for us to use for development instead of borrowing from the donor community”.
He added that because of the failure of institutions to fulfil their mandate, now the youth does not want to engage in hard work like they did in the past as what they watched on TV had oriented them to believe that one only need to do rituals to get rich instead of working.
Nii Otu said the media must rather focus on promoting the good traditional tenets of Ghana, which was aimed at instilling good behaviour and hard work among citizens, and commended the GNA-Tema for creating a platform for traditional leaders.
Mr Ameyibor on his part said one of the greatest challenges in the media now had to do with people launching into the digital space and broadcasting all manner of contents from hidden locations.
He said it would therefore be difficult for regulators to track such diabolical TV transmission stations, stressing that the involvement of teenagers in the quest to seek for worth through rituals had opened a new discussion on media content.
Touching on visit, he said it was aimed at deepening the relationship between the Kpone Traditional Council and the GNA-Tema as well as to collaborate to project the rich traditional culture of the area.
Mr Ameyibor indicated that the Agency had developed traditional news bulletin to enhance reportage on the festivals and cultures of the various areas as the public were gradually losing their sense of culture and copying blindly from others.
GNA
