Senior Presidential Advisor to the Akufo-Addo administration, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, has made a clarion call to religious leaders to use their ministries to preach discipline and the need to pay taxes, to their congregants.

He believes religious institutions have a role to play in public policy making and its implementation.

As such, he urged these institutions to join forces with the government to educate and promote nationalistic values among citizens.

He spoke at a ceremony organised at the Royal House Chapel when the Head Pastor of the Church, Sam Korankye Ankrah was honoured with the US President's Lifetime Achievement Award for his humanitarian acts.

“May I also request you to use your pulpit to inculcate in your members, the value of patriotism, care of the environment, honesty, greater discipline, civic responsibility, including payment of due taxes because nation building is a collective effort and government needs all hands on deck as we mobilise resources to recover from the ravages of COVID-19 pandemic and march forward towards Ghana beyond aid.”

The event took place on Sunday, February 6, at the Headquarters of the Royal House Chapel, Oil Dome, in Accra.

Mr. Osafo-Maafo, who was the Guest Speaker for the occasion, challenged Christians to have interest in assisting the government in executing its mandate.

“We need to examine ourselves. We have code of conduct in Christendom that will perhaps reduce the work of government. Because if people are straightened, stealing will go down. If people are straightened, many of the bad social things we see and hear will be eliminated. And I think we need spiritual leaders like Most Reverend Korankye Ankrah, to do self-purging among Christendom, to take an extra leadership role in Christendom so that we correct a lot of ills of the land.”

The Greater Accra Regional Minister, Henry Quartey used the occasion to make Reverend Sam Korankye Ankrah, the Ambassador for 'Operation Clean Your Frontage'.

“I want to humbly plead with the Most Reverend that we have embarked on what I call 'Operation Clean Your Frontage'. And I want to hand over this area, the Kaneshie area to the Most Reverend. We want to make him one of our ambassadors for 'Operation Clean Your Frontage'.

"Perhaps from today, he could send a communique to all his branches around Greater Accra to ensure that they help with the awareness creation and sensitisation and for that matter helping people to keep their environment clean,” he said.