Yaw Boadu-Ayeboafo, Chairperson of the National Media Commission (NMC) says linking the killing of the 10-year-old boy at Kasoa by two of his friends to the proliferation of spiritualists on television is a lazy way to conduct investigations.
The Ghana Police Service at the Awutu Ofanko District Court stated that the suspects, Felix Nyarko and Nicholas Kini gruesomely murdered their friend Ishmael Mensah intending to use his body parts for money rituals.
The Police indicated that the suspects upon interrogation confessed that they discovered a spiritualist on TV, who told them to bring an amount of GH¢5,000, to help them become instant billionaires.
But speaking to Joy FM in a report monitored by GhanaWeb on Tuesday, Boadu-Ayeboafo said: “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.”
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 Coca-Cola, a suburb near the Great Lamptey-Mills School in Amanfro, Accra.
This has triggered anger among a cross-section of Ghanaians about the increased spiritualists and Mallam programmes on television which promise unreasonable get-rich-quick avenues for unsuspecting youth.
Boadu-Ayeboafo continued: “If the charge sheet says that they say they watch TV that’s why they did that, then I think that maybe that is a lame excuse for them.
We should bemoan some of the things that we see on our television and all that. But to impugn that [such] a heinous crime as this [is due] merely to the fact that somebody watched television, I think that it is too far-fetched.”
He noted that the NMC per the laws of the country cannot interfere with the works of any media house but rather the NMC can only appeal to media owners, “to be decorous in the way that they go about their responsibilities”.
The two suspects have been charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder. They are scheduled to reappear before the court on April 20.
