Blaming TV spiritualists for Kasoa ritual killing a lazy investigation – NMC Chairman

Chairman of the National Media Commission (NMC) has downplayed speculations that the killing of a 10-year-old boy in Kasoa was influenced by the proliferation of spiritualists on national television.

Yaw Boadu-Ayeboafo sees the linkage as a lazy way to approach the investigations into the murder which saw two teenagers, Felix Nyarko and Nicholas Kiki gruesomely murder their friend, Ishmael Mensah with the intention of using his body parts for rituals.

“To put it on a charge sheet that this is the reason why they did that, I think that this is a very lazy investigation,” he said on Newsnight.

According the Police, the suspects – 16 and 18 years respectively – confessed that a spiritualist whom they had discovered through national television agreed to help them become instant billionaires by demanding a human being and a sum of ¢5,000.

The two, per the police charge sheet, admitted that they killed the 10-year-old Ishmael by hitting a club against his neck.

This was after luring him into an uncompleted building under the guise of selling him a video game at Lamptey, a suburb of Kasoa in the Central Region.

This development has triggered anger among a cross-section of Ghanaians about the seeming increase in spiritualists and Mallams on television promising unreasonable get-rich-quick avenues for the unsuspecting youth.

Gone are the days when you’ll find educative and entertaining contents on almost every TV station in Ghana… These days if it’s not Pastors deceiving people it’s juju men running the show. It’s high time we speak up for them to #StopMoneyRitualsOnTv

— ANGEL TOPEDO 🤺 (@ThoughtPillow) April 6, 2021

At first it was by the Fire side, Cantata, Osofo Dadzie, Taxi driver, Key Soap concert party and other nice Gh series full of moral lessons on TV but now you’ll switched on your TV and all that you see is “b3gye sika” komfo) nso ka TV station fa wo ho b3n? #StopMoneyRitualsOnTV

— Ama Darlington🇬🇭💖 (@darlyn_ama) April 6, 2021

However, the NMC Chairman believes the basis for this concern is questionable.

“We should bemoan some of the things that we see on our television and all that. But to impute that a heinous crime as this merely to the fact that somebody watched television, I think that it is too farfetched,” he said on Joy FM.

While admitting importance of the Commission’s role in safeguarding content in the broadcasting space, he said that the NMC remains a paper tiger as long as the Broadcasting Bill remains unpassed.

The  purpose  of  the  Bill  is  to  provide  comprehensive  legislation  on  broadcasting services  regulated  by  the  NMC and  the  National Communications Authority (NCA) in a manner consistent with the constitution.

The NMC boss further indicated that this outfit can only appeal to media owners “to be decorous in the way that they go about their responsibilities,” and nothing more.

Meanwhile, the suspects have been charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The two are scheduled to reappear before the court on April 20, 2021.

Investigators are also on a manhunt for the spiritualist who promised the duo riches in exchange for the body parts.