He refuted claims that Bawumia had said he would pay churches if elected president after the December 7, 2024, presidential elections.
His clarification came hours after Bawumia admitted that his comments were just a joke and that it had been misinterpreted.
“He was taken out of context and if you recall, his policy position was purely on whether churches should pay taxes or not and then that conversation was lost out with misleading headlines like ‘Dr Bawumia says he will pay churches’. So he needed to provide that clarity.
“He never said he was going to pay churches … What he was saying is to highlight the churches’ contribution to our development and he indicated that if anything at all, it shouldn’t be taxes of churches that we should be discussing.”
“We should rather be thinking of how we are going to pay them for all their services and investments to the nation. But he never said categorically that he was going to pay churches,” Aboagye said in an interview on Asaase Radio in Accra.
At a campaign event in the North East Region (May 13), Bawumia emphasised that he wanted to create a golden age of relationship between government and faith-based organizations.
"The church is the foremost development partner of government," he said stressing that if their support disappears, "Ghana will collapse because there will be chaos.
"At that point, I was joking and I said people are talking about taxing churches, I don't believe that and we would not tax churches, because if you look at the work the churches have done, then I was joking, that maybe we should have actually paid them for the work they did not really try to tax them.
"But I wasn't really saying we should pay churches, I'm saying that we should give incentives to churches to do more..."
Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is currently touring Ghana as part of his campaigning ahead of the 2024 general elections.