Ghanaian comedian Abdul Waris Umaru, also known as Comedian Waris, has called on the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, as well as the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), to address controversial trends on social media.
According to him, such trends are causing the country to lose its cultural values, as anyone with a mobile phone now feels entitled to create and share content, much of which he considers inappropriate or unnecessary.
The comedian made these remarks on Joy Prime’s Changes show with Roselyn Felli, while explaining how he manages to stay away from negativity and controversy on social media.
He noted that monetisation has played a key role in keeping him focused, and he believes the Tourism Ministry and CID should ensure that social media platforms work in a way that benefits users positively, ultimately helping to prevent deviant behavior online.
“As Ghana, we’re losing our culture. I call on the Minister of Tourism and Creative Art and the CID office to this issue. Social media is becoming everything. Anyone who has mobile phone feels like they can do anything. Hence, there’s so much negativity and people don’t pay heed to anything the government says or whatever the constitution is. The exemplary life that we see with the social media celebrities and all of that; those who are being hailed, the pick mobile phone and make noise for negativity. I think what saved me was monetization. I got monetized and realized that I don’t need to do podcast and insult anybody. All I needed to do was to do content and post,” Waris noted.
“Why I called on the Minister of Tourism and Creative Art and the CID office is because there should be means of making sure that monetization work so that people will choose their career path on social media and not to make them to insult people.”
He further stated that there needs to be effective measures in place to prevent people from stirring controversy in the media space.
Comedian Waris shared that during a recent trip to Abu Dhabi, he observed that individuals could be fined up to $4,000 for making negative comments online.
This directive has made people in the country, including Ghanaians living there more cautious about their utterances on social media.
“So, why is it that our Ghanaians here do it?” he quizzed, suggesting that the government and stakeholders should “find a way to make the monetization work because when it works, they won’t pay attention to going to social media to insult a leader. Honestly, it’s making us lose our culture. ”