• Murtala cites Akufo-Addo's stance in a 2017 interview with Al Jazeera
• Parliament will deal with an anti-LGBTQ+ Bill when it reconvenes in days
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has been labeled the biggest promoter of the same-sex rights movement in the country.
This is a view advanced by Tamale Central Member of Parliament, Ibrahim Murtala Mohammed, who insists that the lack of steel in President Akufo-Addo’s 2017 response to LGBTQ+ activities in an Al Jazeera interview is what has emboldened activists.
“It is very clear that he is the biggest promoter of this (i.e. LGBTQ+), when he said that it is bound to happen, it took him months to be able to make the other statement that it wouldn’t be passed in his tenure.
“He made that pronouncement not just to Ghanaians but to the global community on Al Jazeera, and that they needed to have a movement that would demand, here comes that movement,” Murtala said in an interview on Tuesday, October 19, 2021.
He stressed that it was also worrying that the government has yet to make a definitive statement on the current LGBTQ brouhaha that has gripped the country in recent weeks whiles rejecting as ‘nonsense’ the move by pro-LGBTQ+ activists to delink the issue from morality.
“The position of government must be made known and the Minority leader stated that, the position of this government must be made known.
"This argument of trying to insulate morality with the law is absolutely nonsense and I say this without mincing words. The Constitution of the republic of this country is a document of morality," he stressed.
Murtala spoke after receiving a petition from the Ambariyya Sunni Community, who were in Parliament to present a memo in support of the anti-LGBTQ+ Bill before Parliament.
Leader of the community told the press that much as they recognized the rights of all people, they disagreed with rights that will lead to society’s “retrogression or underdevelopment.” The Ambariyya said the recent upsurge of LGBTQ+ undermines the survival and existence of human beings.
Promoters of the anti-LGBTQ+ Bill
The LGBTQ+ Bill before Parliament is titled: "The Promotion of Proper Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill 2021." It is a Private Members' Bill sponsored by a bipartisan group of lawmakers.
The eight MPs who sponsored the Bill are Sam Nartey George (MP, Ningo Prampram), Emmanuel Bedzrah (MP, Ho West) Della Adjoa Sowah (MP, Kpando), John Ntim Fordjour (MP, Assin South) – the sole NPP MP sponsoring the Bill.
The remaining sponsors are Alhassan Sayibu Suhuyini (MP, Tamale North), Helen Adjoa Ntoso (MP, Krachi West), Rita Naa Odoley Sowah (MP, La Dadekotopon) and Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor (MP, South Dayi).
Ghana’s pro-gay collective
A group of 18 academicians and human rights defenders have voiced strong opposition to the bill before Parliament, which is seeking to extensively criminalize the activities of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, LGBTQ+.
The group submitted a memorandum to Parliament seeking that the bill be rejected because it was largely unconstitutional and infringed on basic human rights.
Members of Parliament behind the bill, led by Ningo Prampram MP Sam Nartey George, have rubbished the memorandum and asserted that the bill will be passed into law because it has the support of the wider Ghanaian populace.
Ibrahim Murtala Mohammed is MP for Tamale Central