A former senior politician in Ghana says gay people are “sick” who need “psychotic” treatment and that “Africa must resist a new sodomy slave trade”.
Mike Ocquaye previously served as an MP and was Ghana’s High Commissioner to India from 2001 to 2004.
He then became Minister of Energy and finally Minister of Communications from 2006 to 2009.
Mr Ocquaye also served as the Second Deputy Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana between 2009 and 2013.
Ghanaweb reports he told a forum made up of anti-gay activists on Thursday: “It has persistently been argued that homosexuality should be accepted because some men and women are born with hormonal and other deficiencies and that the same applies to lesbians.
“I wish to submit that whenever this happens, it is an indication that the person involved is sick in some way or the other, and what that individual needs is medical or psychotic treatment, not accepting the deviant conduct, otherwise every disability, every ailment can become a ground for breaking the laws of the country or of society and if that should happen, we’ll be worse than the animals.”
According to Mr Ocquaye, “homosexual adults are enticing, inducing and seducing innocent young people into homosexuality and society cannot sit down unconcerned.
“One thing I’ll want to emphasise is that homosexuality today has become a cult. It has become a club. It has become a foundation. It has become something that some people are promoting and putting billions of dollars into so that this unusual and abnormal behaviour should be accepted by force by the world. This is the strength of the danger and for which matter we must stand up strongly against it.”
Suggesting Ghana should toughen its laws against same-sex sexual activity, he said: “In the same way that society punishes the big organisers of prostitution, even more, so should we tighten our laws so that persons from Europe who are facilitating a new homosexual and lesbian trade, employing various avenues, including human trafficking of our youth to Europe, should be checked and punished.
“Africa must resist a new sodomy slave trade so that we nip in the bud, a situation whereby lesbian groups, clubs and societies who have huge sums of money, will export our youth, use them for their improper pleasures of the flesh, infect them with diseases and dump them. This is not a joke. The same way they get visas overnight for brilliant footballers, so will they start obtaining visas for our young people using the influence of the powerful gay lobby in the UK and other countries. If we keep quiet now, we shall mourn miserably in some years to come.”