Accra, March 25, GNA - The Central University College (CUC) is to build a William Ofori Atta Centre for Governance and Leadership for academia, Dr Pastor Mensa Otabil, Founder of the International Central Gospel Church announced on Thursday.

The centre would be a place for research, mentoring and nurturing wholesomeness in public life.

Dr Pastor Otabil described William Ofori Atta as a Statesman having the spirit of God, intellect, energy and compassion towards the development of the country.

He made the announcement at the fifth in the series of public lecture of the William Ofori Atta Centenary celebration on the topic: William Ofori Atta: His Christian Heritage and its relevance to Contemporary Ghana" in Accra.

Dr Pastor Otabil said William Ofori Atta was concerned about the civil liberties and the future of Ghana and tried to fight to realise the formation of this nation.

He said the statesman's life had compelled all to examine how personal faith in Christ interfaced with public concepts such as justice, service, integrity and productivity. He noted that 93Christians throughout the ages have often been guilty of majoring on the minors and minoring on the majors. Frequently we focus all our time and energies on endless debates about the non-essentials of our faith".

Dr Otabil explained that the mark of true Christianity was not seen in the invocation of the name of Jesus but was also seen when the spirit of Christ motivates our actions and when our lives were lived in accordance with God's laws.

He said Christians have a mission to be good stewards of the earth's resources, noting that Christians should demonstrate God's love for all, by crossing racial, ethnic, economic and national boundaries. "As practising Christians we must seek to live our lives in accordance with scripture. We submit to authority of the Bible in areas where we have clarity on what the will of God is," he added. He urged Christians to engage in public policy with detail social, economic, historical, legal and political analysis, if they wanted to understand their society and wisely applied their belief to political questions.

He said as a nation we have allowed the parochial, ethnic and political biases to arrest our conscience and sense of decency, pushing intelligent, sincere and honest exchanges on national development beyond the boundaries of reason.

Dr Pastor Otabil said the country had stopped thinking, noting that 93we talk loudly and think little. "This is a noisy nation with not clarity, so much heat but no light= ".

He mentioned that there were verbal abuses across political lines without care for the youth, saying our national life had degenerated into a free-for-all fistfight with no holds barred.

On challenges confronting the state, he said, educational standards were falling, infectious diseases killing citizens, lack of water, industries drying, the gap between the rich and the poor kept widening and yet much was not done to address them.

He cautioned Christians to keep their eyes open to the potentially self-destructive tendencies of various political groupings in the country. 25 March 11