“I came to spend four years to better the lives of the people. It takes only a religious fanatic to know the five daily prayers. It is only when you don’t have proper work to do that you vividly remember that every three hours there is prayer time.
“It is only when you have time that you even realize that someone did not come to the mosque. It is only when you sit and take tea that you realize that there is prayer time.
“When you have proper work to do, you even forget to pray. Or you combine all the five daily prayers and pray at a particular time, and God will understand.”
Lawyer Charles Lwanga Puozuing, Upper West Regional Minister, in a viral video. (Story written by Ibrahim Wangara and published in 3News of April 19, 2025)
Wealth, political power and personal achievement have a unique capacity to breed pride and arrogance in people to the extent that they sometimes become oblivious to their human frailties and inevitable death.
Traversing the phases of human history are indelible records of men and women corrupted by arrogance of power, wealth, and achievement and suffering from delusions of grandeur. Yet, the failure to learn from history continues to be a nemesis, with humiliating, and, sometimes, deadly consequences for such persons. In fact, in extreme cases, such people behave as if they are God in whose hands the destiny of lower mortals are massaged.
In the early 1980s, a member of the Rawlings-led PNDC, General Arnold Quainoo, was in Nigeria, where a journalist asked about arrangements for transition to constitutional rule. “Hand over to whom?” General Quainoo replied in voice bloated with overconfidence that betrayed a belief of the PNDC leadership in being the awaited Messiah for Ghana’s socio-political redemption to which no alternative existed. Just 10 years later, this soldier and his band of revolutionaries, who had treasonably overthrown the Liman government, had to quit the scene through the force of social change.
In later years, Buffalo Soldier, as he was also known, became a footnote of social discourse with reduced relevance and exited the world recently unsung.
Preceding the PNDC was the Progress Party (PP) government of Kofi Abrefa Busia, which won 105 out of the 140 seats in the 1969 elections to usher in constitutional democratic governance after the overthrow of Dr. Nkrumah’s Convention Peoples Party in 1966. During the tenure of the Progress Party’s tenure, Lt. General Albert Ocran, a member of the National Liberation Council, that toppled the CPP made remarks which the General Secretary of the PP, Mr. B.J. da Rocha regarded as potentially subversive.
He wasted no time reminding the General, by inference, of the huge electoral mandate Ghanaians had given his party. “It will take more than a General to overthrow the Progress Party government.” Well, the rest is history. Some months later, in a cruel situational irony, Dr. Busia was overthrown in a coup on January 13, 1972. Not by a ‘six-star’ General, but a Lieutenant Colonel, Kutu Acheampong, who was not even a one-star General.
Then, there was this gentleman, Charlie Duke, a member of the United States 1972 Apollo Space 16 Mission. Thrilled by an ordinary space flight, he had boasted that he went to the moon but did not find God. Neither did he experience any spiritual connection to God or the wonder of creation while on the moon, he added. It was reminiscent of Pharaoh’s order to Haman, his minister of works, to build for him a lofty tower so he could access it as a means to the heavens for him to have a look at the God of Moses.
The irony of history is that the world always finds room for such select group of individuals to operate and suffer humiliation and public derision brought on by hubris.
One day in April, this year, Ghanaian Muslims woke up to be hit in the face, like a thunder bolt, with the reportage of remarks (quoted in the intro) captured in a viral video in which the Upper West Regional Minister, Hon. Charles Lwanga Puonzuin, on the occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr, with no holds barred, unleashed an artillery of insults on them without cause.
Still basking in the euphoria of his appointment, he felt emboldened to denigrate Muslims without regard to the dignity and comportment of his office, wisdom, decorum and civility. After all, they are a minority, without political clout and, therefore, a soft target to be shot at with least consequence.
Hear him, “It is only when you don’t have proper work to do that you vividly remember that every three hours there is prayer time. It is only when you have time that every three hours there is prayer time. When you have proper work to do, you even forget to pray. Or you combine all the five daily prayers and pray at a particular time, and God will understand.”
What crime have Muslims committed to deserve this? They have not committed treason! They have not committed murder! If it can so be described, their crime is manifesting their faith through their five daily prayers, an injunction from God, their Creator.
Describing Muslims as fanatics, with derogatory connotation, the Regional Minister, who apparently holds the view that the sole purpose of man’s creation is material acquisition through work, characterized Muslims as people without any purpose and that accounts for their observance of the five daily prayers.
First, Muslims have not complained about their difficulty in observance of the five daily prayers. More than a million Muslims the world over understand and acknowledge the value and benefits of the five daily prayers. Thus they put on hold all temporal pursuits and flock to mosques, remain at home, in their shops and offices, to worship and supplicate the Almighty.
Of course, there are nominal Muslims who do not observe the Islamic teachings and practices, including the five daily prayers. That is their choice, for God states without equivocation that “there shall be no compulsion in matters of faith.” (Holy Quran 2:257) Any advocacy on behalf of such Muslims lacks merit for the fact that the door of opportunity is wide open for them to abjure the faith and please themselves.
Second, people who commit themselves zealously to the pursuit of an activity that has immense material, moral and spiritual rewards cannot be described as fanatics. And it defies reason when the activity, a commandment from the All Knowing, and All Wise-God, is subjected to mockery and ridicule by a mere mortal consumed by self-conceit.
Third, the Regional Minister stands reminded that his conduct equates to questioning the wisdom and right of God to set an objective for man, the noblest of all His creation, to whom He has been gracious in providing all that he needs without man asking for them. Essentially, he has insolently delivered a verdict of guilt against God and sentenced Him to wrong exercise of His right over His creation.
The Regional Minister’s gratuitous and premeditated insult of Muslims exposes his bigotry. It deserves condemnation. However, no apology is demanded. From a religious or tribal bigot, an apology is a masquerade that obscures malignant satisfaction over the harm caused to his victims.
Whether Lawyer Charles Lwanga Puozuing likes it or not, his reckless and irresponsible utterances against Muslims will continue to be accessed and read by current and future generations of Muslims and non-Muslims, including his children and grandchildren. And surely, they will not think kindly of him!
By Mohammed Affum
