Ghana Just Made Praying on a Bus a Crime

Imagine being jailed for eight months because you opened your mouth on a bus and prayed for a stranger's safe journey. In Ghana, that is no longer hypothetical. Since parliament passed a new regulation in May, anyone caught preaching in a public service vehicle faces up to eight months in prison, a fine of up to $52, or both. The offence has been written into law, and enforcement began in recent weeks.

Consider who this lands on. Boateng Bismark James is a 61-year-old pastor at Gospel Light church in Accra. Since 2023, he has been boarding buses that leave the Neoplan station, leading a team of 13 worshippers through prayer and song before they move among the passengers. He is not a fraud with a microphone. He is a grandfather who says his preaching paid for part of his youngest child's university education. Under this law, the work that put a child through school is now a prosecutable act, and the man doing it can lose his freedom for it.

The law targets preaching and hawking on vehicles while they are in motion, and it classifies both as a nuisance, citing the safety and comfort of passengers. Those are real concerns, and we will not pretend otherwise. A preacher who stands beside the driver can distract him. A passenger who wants silence has every right to it. But notice what the legislation actually does. It does not distinguish between a pastor asking permission and a man who shouts into a stranger's ear. It does not separate the driver's safety from the passenger's consent. It simply bans the act, and in doing so it punishes the many for the conduct of the few.

Ghana has been here before. Preaching on commercial buses was first prohibited in 2012, with offenders facing up to 30 days in prison. Enforcement was weak, so the practice carried on, and the government's answer was not reform but escalation. Eight months replaced thirty days. A law that was ignored for a decade has been made harsher rather than smarter. That is the oldest trick in the African governance playbook: when you cannot enforce a rule, make the penalty bigger and hope fear does the work that competence never did.

And consider the detail that nobody in government seems eager to explain. Preachers using megaphones at lorry parks and markets are not affected by the ban. The law bites hardest in the enclosed, intimate space of a bus, where a passenger has no escape and a preacher has no audience beyond whoever happens to be seated there. Is this about noise? Or is it about who gets to speak in the shared spaces of ordinary life, and who gets quietly told to be silent? A government that wants to protect public order should be able to answer that question without hiding behind the word nuisance.

Ghana is among the most religious countries on earth. Its constitution guarantees freedom of religion, subject to public safety and related considerations. That guarantee does not disappear because a bus is moving. The right to speak, to persuade, and to be heard about faith is one of the oldest freedoms our ancestors fought for, and we should be deeply uneasy about any state that decides, by statute, which sermons are lawful and where they may be delivered. Today it is buses. Tomorrow it is the market square, the radio phone-in, or the campus lecture hall. Freedoms are not usually taken in one dramatic blow. They are eroded one reasonable-sounding regulation at a time.

Yet the passengers who complain are not wrong to be angry. One woman in her early thirties, Chery Lokko, described being sprayed with saliva and assaulted by noise on her journey. Another traveller, Bernice Nartey, offered what should be the foundation of any sensible law: preaching is acceptable if passengers consent. That is the whole answer in one sentence. Consent is what separates a ministry from an intrusion. Ghana has the institutions to deliver it. It does not need to choose between the preacher and the passenger. It needs to protect both.

So here is the solution, and it is not complicated. Parliament should amend the law from a blanket criminal ban into a consent-based framework. Preaching should be lawful on public transport when passengers have been asked and have the option to decline, with a clear and easy way to opt out. Preaching should be prohibited while a vehicle is in dangerous manoeuvres, when the driver is being approached in the cabin, or when a passenger has said no. Harassment, spitting, and physical intimidation are already offences under Ghana's existing laws, and those laws should be enforced against the individual who commits them, not used as a pretext to criminalise an entire practice. A preacher who spits on a passenger should face prosecution for assault. A preacher who asks permission and accepts a no should face no penalty at all.

Civil society and the private sector have a role here too. Ghana's churches, through bodies such as the Christian Council and the Pentecostal and Charismatic Council, can and should adopt codes of conduct for bus ministries, with training, identification, and sanctions for members who break the rules. Transport unions, including the Ghana Private Road Transport Union, can negotiate with ministries on routes, departure times, and passenger notices. This is what a mature democracy looks like: regulated by rules, not by fear, and shaped by the people it affects rather than imposed upon them from a distant ministry. Pluralist states such as Mauritius have shown that multiple faiths can share public life with mutual respect, and Botswana has built its credibility on the rule of law and predictable governance. Ghana already has the democratic tradition to do this better. It simply has to choose it.

We have seen what happens when African governments decide that public order means silencing the citizen. They call it protection. They call it safety. And then the ban quietly widens until the people who suffer most are the poor who depend on the bus, the preacher who depends on the offering, and the ordinary voice that was never given a platform. Ghana's constitution is clear about the rights it protects. Its parliament should be just as clear about the rights it refuses to surrender.

So what must happen next? Members of Parliament must table an amendment that replaces prohibition with consent, and they must do it before the first preacher is hauled off a bus and into a courtroom. The Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of the Interior must publish clear enforcement guidelines and stop arresting people for prayer while the law remains vague. Church leaders must stop waiting for a letter to be answered and start drafting the code of conduct themselves. And every Ghanaian who has ever taken a bus to Kumasi, Takoradi, or Tamale should write to their MP today and ask one question: when a pastor asks whether you want to hear the word of God, why should the answer be a prison sentence? Freedom is not a gift the state hands down. It is a standard the state must meet, and we are holding it to that standard now.

Based on reporting by BBC