The Pedophilic Marriage of the High Priest Ought to be Condemned by All

If the typical Ghanaian were to be asked to cut open the stomach of a pregnant mother and to rip out a golden child of cultural values, he will do it with aplomb. Not so much because we are a people in love with our cultural values, but merely because “gold” has been mentioned in association with “culture”; and so we will use the culture as the cover for the gold. The only thing that will supplant this gold is where the gold could be substituted with virgin sex.

Otherwise, I don’t understand the marriage that recently occurred between a mere twelve/sixteen/fifteen-year-old child and a sixty-three year old grandfather. The outcry that occurred at the outset of this marriage was subdued when the cultural crinkum was invoked as a cover-up! But I watched the marriage on YouTube myself, and I can testify that the thing was a real ostentatious Ga cultural marriage: There was the High Priest justifying his marriage to a child by references to the Bible, talking about Mary and Joseph…… And there was this long line of women carrying all assortments of gifts: Clothes, spices, perfumes, sandals, drinks and others. There was this succulent looking, precocious teenager, just obviously past her prepubescent age, and magnificently resplendent in her traditional regalia, the very sight of a cherubic nymph….Ambrosia for the gods!

And when everybody was seated, there was this eloquent Mistress of the Ceremony, describing the duties of a good wife, how she can perform house chores and how the child could please her man in bed, all the while attracting the explicit ululations and approbation of the enthusiastic crowd!

Then came the outcry in the news media! Then the narrative changed! And all of a sudden, the child was being betrothed to a deity! And people began to recapitulate! The first was the Minister of Chieftaincy who first denied that the child was indeed a child, glibly explaining that she was not twelve years as initially reported, and that she was three months to her sixteenth birthday. And there was this unique Ga elder wearing a crown of leaves, and speaking uncannily perfect Twi, explaining that the spirits desired a virgin, and that whatever had happened was a spiritual and a symbolic marriage, where no conjugal relationship was involved. The people began to capitulate in favor of their High Priest, and there is the suspicion that the police had heeded the warning issued by the traditional authorities and returned the child to her marital home. If not now, they will certainly do that at some point in the future. The brave Okatakyie Afrifa, who lambasted the whole affair, later on retracted and apologized and appeared sheepishly before the Ga elders. His contrition was indeed palpable. He later said that he did not know that the sixty-three year old man that married the child was a “big man”.

Now let me make these points clear. Firstly, people make up their deities, and speak into them those words they themselves choose. And most of the time, the gods we speak into being are mere dogs, no matter how big we think they are. And so the gods have been made to fixate on sex, so much so that they are known to impregnate little girls. As was in the case of Mary, the mother of Jesus. And because of that, little girls should not only be protected against these deities, but we should imprison the representatives of these deities whenever their gods go wayward and impregnate any child.

And the second point is that these gods and spirits are an exact replica of the society’s conduct. And it will be foolish to imagine that this so-called “big man” is the only culprit in the deflowering of little virgin girls. This matter is a loud secret in our society where ministers of God, ministers of state, traditional chiefs, family elders, teachers and politicians are fixated and the virginity of little girls and are engaged in ripping it off. So this matter should not be seen as unique to the “Big Man”. He had the impudence to engage in this type of marriage because it is commonplace in Ghana, and many of those who engage in it have not suffered any consequence, because it is done with the family and societal acquiescence. If you watch the video of the ceremony of this dastardly marriage, you will see that the audience reflected the diversity within the society, and they were not perturbed by any of the incongruity. Because it was business as usual…..

Thirdly. We have been with the Gas since the beginnings of this nation. We have married Gas, befriended Gas, done business with Gas and spoken their language which used to be the lingua franca in the boarding house. We also know the Ga culture very well. There is no Ga culture that promulgates the marriage of a virgin to a god. And so this whole shebang was concocted to validate a marriage between a sexually dead man who thinks that he can experiment with his virility by marrying a nymph. That marriage has nothing cultural to it. Period.

The fourth point is that whatever is abolished by law is also prohibited to the spirits. Because the spirits are not disembodied entities; they are always looking to inhabit living things through whom they operate; and those living things they inhabit are subject to feelings and taboos and laws, whether of nature, or of humans…… And so we cannot proscribe anything by law and consecrate same to the spirits by fiat of their representatives. One pregnant virgin Mary is enough in our history. We don’t want any other. If this girl is not already pregnant, we should protect her from being impregnated by either man or spirit, because that will also be illegal, for which the representatives of the deity will be held accountable.

The Biblical prophets came up with this nonsense: Moses was having his way with the Cushite woman whereas he had banned foreign marriages to his people; Isaiah and Amos married to make a point they could have made without the marriage to a maiden or to a prostitute. And today, the attachment of most religious men to sex is very well-known; the difference is that it’s more the norm than the exception. I have heard of a story where a pastor asked to bathe the wife of his best friend. When the wife retorted that she would agree to do it provided it happened in from of his husband, the pastor cursed her out and reported to the woman’s husband and trusty friend that he should divorce the wife because she was practicing witchcraft.

So the obsession of these horny religious leaders with sex has been with us from the very beginnings, and what they have constructed for us as our sacred duty is also what satiates their sacred libido. But we must be intelligent to understand that although the country is younger than the state, the country is superior to the state. And so those who imagine that they can do what they want outside of the laws of the country will face the full rigid rigor of the law, irrespective of their status, their power, their influence or their libido.

We repeat as we began: If the typical Ghanaian were to be asked to cut open the stomach of a pregnant mother and to rip out a golden child of cultural values, he will do it with aplomb. Not because we are a people in love with our cultural values, but merely because “gold” has been mentioned in association with “culture”; and so we will use the culture as the cover for the gold. The only thing that will supplant this gold is where the gold could be substituted with virgin sex. And so we will not be fooled.

By Dr. Samuel Adjei Sarfo, Esq.