Source: Ben LARYEA
The Bible Society of Ghana (BSG) as part of the Bible week 2022 celebration has held a day’s symposium in Accra under the theme, “The Bible and Integrity”.
The symposium brought together scores of faith based organisations and other churches in the Greater Accra Region to engage and contribute to the socio-economic needs of the country through integrity from the Christian perspectives to enhance good governance and nation building.
The week long activities include talk on the theme, Bible reading marathon, symposium and bible quiz.
Speaking on the topic “Integrity: Role of Fairness, Impartiality”, Her Ladyship Mrs. Justice Georgina T. Wood challenged Christians for that matter Ghanaians to exhibit integrity in all working endeavours and urged the citizenry to uphold transparency and demonstrate selfless services towards the upliftment of the socio-economic development of the country.
According to her, Christians form majority of the Ghanaian population thus the citizenry must refrain from the acts of corruption at every level in the society and therefore called for the strengthening of institutions to monitor and check the weakness, leakages, excesses in the governing structure of institutions to avoid financial losses.
“Law enforcement agencies must be well resourced and empowered to sanction law breakers as well as people who flout the laws of the country”, she said, adding further that Ghanaians must duly fulfil their tax obligations to support government to meet its infrastructural and social amenities.
She however urged the citizenry to pay their tax to fulfil tax obligations and abide by the tax rules at all times and advised Ghanaians as well as government to continue to scale up the education on civic rights to enable the people to demonstrate patriotism and nationalistic values in every area of the country and further explained that the media have a significant role to play in this regard.
For his part, Former Chairperson of National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) Prof Stephen Adei who spoke on a topic “Integrity: The Impact of Corruption” said the absence of integrity in some parts of the governance systems of the country have led to a rising increase in corruption and thus urged government to put in place the needed remedies to block leakages that account to corruption.
Lack of integrity have contributed to a sharp increase in corruption hence government must tackle the issue upfront”, he stressed and again called on government to put to the fore a mechanism where people in the helm of affairs to disclose their property prior to taking up public office.
“The Church must rise up against corruption as its inputs in the governance of the country will lead to rapid economic growth”.
In a remark, Most Rev. Dr. Paul Boafo, the Presiding Bishop of Methodist Church, Ghana urged Christians to keep and read the Bible as a spiritual companion and it is the way to heaven hence the Holy book must be in every household, adding that issues of integrity and truthfulness be inculcated in the governance of the country.
Rev. Dr. Enoch Aryee-Atta, General Secretary of BSG said the Society is fervently working on the million Bible project and have put in place measures to ensure that the Bible is distributed to the upper primary as well as the Junior Secondary School (JSS) level and explained that it is part of the effort to bring the Word of God to the youth.
