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.

JoyNews/AdomNews · Blaming TV spiritualists for Kasoa ritual killing a lazy investigation – NMC Chairman
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.

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.