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Corruption is thriving because political parties are getting populated by “very active, vociferous men and women who may not necessarily place a lot of premium on integrity and morality”, Andrew Awuni, former spokesperson of President John Agyekum Kufuor, has said.

Bemoaning the spate of corruption in the country and in Africa at large on Class91.3FM’s Executive Breakfast Show (EBS), Mr Awuni called on religious leaders to begin to educate their followers on the need to live decent moral lives to help reduce corrupt practices for the benefit of future generations.

He told show host, Moro Awudu, on Thursday, 7 September 2017 that: “I’m beginning to feel that our political parties are getting more and more populated by very active vociferous men and women who may not necessarily place a lot of premium on integrity and morality. Our political parties are getting populated by very nice men and women, vociferous, active, but these people may not necessarily place premium on the issues of integrity and morality and that is where the fear is…”

In his opinion, “When we talk about people hijacking governments, it is not just cocaine dealers who hijack governments. In Guinea Bissau, cocaine dealers hijack governments. It is all about money bags and money bags can hijack a whole parliament. Money bags can hijack a whole government and people are beginning to become richer than the state and when they become richer than the state, they can tell who should be the next president…”

To help minimise corruption, Mr Awuni suggested that religious leaders had a role to play in reorienting their followers on the vanity of riches.

“Please, I’m begging our men and women of God, I’m begging our Mallams, let us come back to the message of humanity that ‘you, Moro and I, Andrew Awuni, will not stay on this earth forever’. So there is really no point in laying in a golden bed. It is better to go to Osu and give that hungry child a piece of bread than to lay in a golden bed. In the next 50 years I will not know who will stay in that house I call my own. Maybe a total stranger will be staying in that house you are stealing to build right now. So if our men and women of God can cut back and begin to let us understand that we are in transition, that we are going to leave this place, maybe people will not want to pile a lot of monies under their beds and have rooms full of [riches],” he added.