These knavish prophets feed on the ignorance of Ghanaians!

The belief that every misfortune that happens in Ghana must be attributed to the devil is giving some pastors and some so-called prophets a chance to feed on the ignorance of some believers, destroying their innovative thinking, killing their confidence and maiming their entrepreneurial skills, all in the name of telling them some unreasonable revelations they purport to have received from the Spirit of God, and use it to create fear and panic in the minds of the feeble ones to cow them into succumbing to their latent manipulations!

I just watched this pastor or a prophet in the attached video, prophesying or preaching to his congregation in Ghana, saying that, the UT Bank and Capital Bank which were recently absorbed by the GCB under the instruction of Bank of Ghana, happened because the Owners and Directors of the collapsed banks were practising occultism to syphon moneys from their customers.

I have been so dumbfounded watching this man make such an atrocious comment a Ghanaian business before his large congregation; a comment which was very damaging to the very survival of these banks operating in Ghana. His utterance in the house of God about the UT bank in particular, was utterly preposterous and reckless, that was excessively absurb and palpable lie to deceive his followers. Such shockingly wicked comment, skillfully designed to damage the reputation and credibility of the established Ghanaian bank should never have come from a so-called Minister of the Gospel.

Frankly speaking, if I were one of the Directors of UT Bank, I would have met this man in law court for damages and deformation of character. This kind of irresponsible utterances from the pulpits by church leaders in Ghana must stop as their pronouncements drag the name of God into disrepute and tarnish the image of Christianity.

From all indications, looking at the health of Ghana's economy in the past three years and witnessing what has finally happened today, it is very obvious that there are many factors which have contributed to the collapse of the Capital bank and UT bank which have absolutely nothing to do with any occultic influences or operations.

These happenings in Ghana Banks and the swiftness with which the current government is handling the situation is teaching us all some good lessons about prudent economic management. Ghanaians should not allow any feckless and irrepressible comments by some roguish and knavish preachers to cloud our minds with their unguarded and deceptive spiritual comments

The question is, why do we appear to have forgotten so soon about the possible ramifications that was likely to follow the long period of frequent power outages (Dumsor) which devilled Ghana for over four years. The fact is, the effect of the mismanagement of the economic situation under President Mahama was likely to be felt for years if not decades to come. Thank God there was an intervention of change of government. What happened to the Capital Bank and UT bank is a clear demonstration of the colossal mismanagement of the banks which has nothing to do with occultism as the preacher wants us to believe.

It is also a fact that, a mismanagement of any economy anywhere present its own detrimental consequences in the long run. Let's consider the recent cause of the world's economic meltdown which occurred about a decade ago. This world financial crisis happened as the results of the banks taking the liberty to create too much money, too quickly, and used it to push up house prices and speculate on financial markets.

The economic experts would tell you that, every time a bank makes a loan, new money is created. Lending large sums of money into the property market in UK and US for instance, pushed up the price of houses along with the level of personal debts. The agreed interest has to be paid on all the loans that banks make, and with the debt rising quicker than incomes, eventually some people became unable to keep up with repayments. At this point, they stopped repaying their loans, and the banks found themselves in danger of going bankrupt. This was the genesis of the recent recession. We need to understand that, Banks lend when they’re confident that the loans will be repaid. So when the economy is doing badly, what usually happens is that, the banks limit their lending. Although the banks reduce the amount of new loans they make, the public still have to keep up with their repayments on the debts they already have.

Now juxtaposing this to what has happened to the UT bank and Capital bank. According to the Bank of Ghana's records, these banks couldn't keep up with their Efficiency Ratio which the BoG uses to calculate their turnover of receivables, the repayment of liabilities, the quantity and usage of equity, and the general use of inventory and machinery.

Though these banks were recognised for their rapid growth which earned them prestigious awards in previous years, it appears that a hidden problem was brewing due to the bad economic situation which was overlooked. People were trooping in to invest their moneys with these banks at relatively higher interest rate on their investments. The banks in turn gave out these moneys in the form of loans at a higher interest to the borrowers.

But in this situation, because of the precarious economic position of the country under President John Mahama, the demand for loans dropped significantly. Meanwhile, the banks were obliged to pay interest on the moneys investors have deposited with them whether they lend it out or not. This inevitably created debts for the banks as far as interest payment on investors money is concerned.

Again, those who took out loans from these banks were unable to keep up with their repayment due to the same unstable economic situation. This caused some customers to lose the collaterals they used to secure their loans, and this is where the rumour started that the banks were using occultic powers on their customers.

As you can see from the above analysis, this has nothing to do with occultism whatsoever, it is purely economics.

This is not the first time a thing like this has happened with financial institutions. When the recession occurred, some financial institutions were fast to seek a bailout. Example, Merrill Lynch agreed to quickly sell itself to Bank of America for roughly $50 billion to avert a deepening financial crisis. The hurried merger gave the Bank of America a footprint in almost every facet of the banking business and vaults it into the upper tier of the nation’s financial institutions, just like the Bank of Ghana has done to secure the UT bank and Capital bank.

Another example is the fall of Lehman Brothers. In September of 2008, Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street icon, collapsed amid the biggest financial crisis in more than 70 years. In same year 2008, the British Bank called Northern Rock was also nationalised by the British Labour Government, due to the financial problems caused by the subprime mortgage crisis.

Now my question is, is the so-called 'prophet' (Prophet of doom) saying that all these world class banks collapsed by virtue of the fact that their owners and directors were practising Occultism?

We are told that one of the two banks (Capital Bank) is owned by Pastor Mensah Otabil. Is this Prophet implying that Pastor Otabil also practices occultism?

It is time we put a stop to these malicious and diabolical pronouncements by these doomsday prophets aimed at misleading their followers and plunging them into unnecessary fear and panic, as well as destroying the hard earned reputations and achievements of others. This is demonic and must stop.