I spent some time watching the video that showed the brutal flogging of a young man and lady by Bishop Daniel Obinim in his church premises for allegedly committing adultery. After a while I came to the conclusion that the Bishop was wrong in his approach to dealing with the couple who are his church members. As a person who claims to be a man of God he felt he punished them for ‘misbehaving” but he was wrong.
The people of Ghana in all parts of the country and from all ethnic groups are all governed by laws under the constitution of Ghana. Leaders of all groups are required to compliment government in caring for the people under them but through legally acceptable means. Nobody, be they church leaders’ imams and traditional rulers do not have the right to take the law in their own hands by punishing people for committing offences without resorting to due processes of our laws.
The reason is that even if those people were found to have acted contrary to the rules of the church and that of the bible Bishop Obinin must know that what he did runs contrary to the wishes of the Lord and the constitution of Ghana. My little knowledge of the Bible tells me that Jesus was sympathetic to the cause of sinners. That is why he drew them closer to him in order to teach those people ways of repenting and drawing closer to God. Since all mankind are sinners it behooves all especially religious leaders to help them out not by flogging them but by dealing kindly with them true teachings of the gospel.
The question to ask is after punishing hem openly how does the Bishop expect these young man and woman to relate with members of the church and feel comfortable in the coming days? Is he sure they would be happy in church where they were brutalized by the leader of their church in the presence of a large congregation? A whole lot of people who got to know about this are not happy with the action taken by the Bishop because it is unusual and without foundation in the Christendom and Ghana’s public life. We therefore support the step being taken by the authorities to bring the Bishop to book
The step taken by the Ministry Of Gender Children and Social Protection to report the Bishop to the Accra Regional office of the Domestic Violence and Victims’ Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service, for publicly flogging two young adults in his church for fornication is appropriate.
We are happy to learn that the police have commenced investigations into the matter and a complaint has also been filed against him [Obinim] at the Tema Regional Police. The sector minister Nana Oye Lithur says in her face book post that she will keep watch over the development on the case and get the public informed accordingly
Bishop Obinim who has often come to public view over some issues in the recent past has come under heavy criticism on social media for flogging the teenagers with a belt.
On the videotape that captured the flogging, Bishop Obinim kept chastising and asking the young lovers if they were “stupid”.
At a point, his wife, Florence, was seen intervening and pleading for mercy on behalf of the two, but the controversial bishop was intent on disciplining the two lovers.