Nii Adjetey Agbo II, the Acting President of the Tema Traditional Council and Mankralo of Tema, has said the Council is working on banning expensive funerals in the area. 

Nii Agbo, interacting with the media during the 2025 Homowo celebrations, said this had become necessary to safeguard the future of the young ones by ensuring that parents channeled more financial resources into their care and education.

“We are going to ban the buying of funeral clothes in Tema and the expensive funeral celebrations. We want our brothers in the other communities, such as La, Nungua, Teshie and Osu, to do the same to make funerals solemn and simple,” he said. 

In recent times, funerals, which used to be solemn occasions meant to traditionally transit the dead from the land of the living to their final resting place, had been turned into expensive ventures, as bereaved families engaged in buying funeral cloths and organising burial parties (gbonyo parties), which sometimes run deep into the night.

 The Mankralo said instead of wasting such funds on these occasions, it should be channeled into caring for the surviving children of the deceased to secure their future and that of the community.

He said most parents had neglected their duties of caring for their children, leading to child delinquency, as most of the youth were currently engaged in social vices, including the abuse of opioids and other illicit drugs. 

“If everyone has a CCTV camera at home, if you watch at night, you will be amazed at some of the things the youth do,” he said.

The Mankralo stated that the Council had met with religious organisations as well as the Municipal Chief Executive to discuss the issue, so that people engaged in these acts would be apprehended and their parents educated to take control and responsibility.