In Ghana, there are more churches and mosques than there is critical social infrastructure. Our Sundays are bereft of secular serenity, as halleluiahs of singing and dancing become the accepted nuisance to many Ghanaians. Each morning, our Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods also wake up to competing calls to prayer, much to the disdain of equally many people.

Yet, next to our churches and mosques, the gutters are choked and our streets are cluttered. Flies, mice, and men compete for congested space. If we accept that there are cumulatively90% Christians and Muslims in Ghana, we must also accept the unpalatable fact that church-going and mosque-visiting Ghanaians are responsible for the filth in our streets. It is as if God has commanded us thus: O my children, litter thy streets and choke thy gutters, so that thou may fall sick. It is only then shall the Lord’s healing glory be manifest.

The paradox of this is that in both Christianity and Islam it is as ungodly to litter our streets as it is to sleep with a brother’s wife or a sister’s husband. Yet, whilst we accept the latter as the abhorrent sin that it is, we have accepted the former as a normal part of our daily lives.We need to remind ourselves that a clean environment is also a religious obligation.

There are many verses in the Bible calling on Christians to maintain clean bodies and clean environments. In Islam, there are clear commandments to Muslims not to litter, urinate or defecate in water or other public places.And there are great rewards to be had by obeying these commandments. Unfortunately, if you take inventory of sanitation in most Muslim enclaves in Ghana you will think of the above Islamic exhortations as simply non-existent. Equally, most of our Christian neighbourhoods are also choked with filth.

How can we maintain clean bodies for God in a dirty environment? And, if purifying oneself—which, as a matter of course, must include purifying the environment—is inherent to both Christian and Islamic teachings, why are our environments so rotten and ungodly?The filth in our streets a clear testimony that Christians and Muslims alike have deserted the pristine religious obligations to a clean environment.Collectively, we must thus question the genuineness of our commitment to holiness and purity if we live in so much filth.Abandoning our religious obligation towards the environment is indeed an affront to our fanatic commitment to religiosity. By it we render ourselves, renegades and hypocrites.

Since there are clear religious commandments to maintain clean environments, we are left with one truth: a Christian who litters the environment and leaves filth in public places is simply a dirty Christian, regardless of how clean he or she may look from the outside.Only a dirty heart okays a dirty environment.Equally, a Muslim may wash their body five times a day. But if the rationale for washing is well-intended, Islamically that is, then that washing will also prevent the Muslims from littering the environment.Equally, a Muslim who litters the environment is at once a dirty Muslim.

However, the sanitation problem is never an individual problem. Given the many negative consequences of poor sanitation on the safety of fellow Ghanaians, the problem is now a national security issue.The Ghana Health Service has alerted Ghanaians to a looming cholera outbreak in our communities if we don’t clear the filth. That also means a rise in malaria cases and other ailments. That also means the potential deaths of people from floods during the next rainy season.What happened to thou shall not kill when we litter our streets knowing very well that dirt kills?

But there is still time to repent.Ghana’s sanitation problem may not be solved without the intervention of Church and Mosque. An impassioned anti-filth campaign launched from our pulpits and mimbars, can prevent all this and save Ghanaians from a looming danger.Imagine what would happen if at least 90% of all Ghanaians commit, from now on, to a clean Ghana. And imagine if we succeed in reminding our renegade Souls that God wills it.

Heaven thought about this, we must be prepared to act. On individual, community and society levels, we must seek ye first a clean environment, and many more benefits shall be added unto us—good health, more money in our pockets, healthy lifestyles, much coveted pure, fresh air and of course the love of God. Let us commit to a clean environment wherever we are, and undertake to main it. We may start with the following or similar actions:

• Before you do anything that will create rubbish (such as buying sachet water, sweeping your cars, offices or houses) think first about where you will dispose off the rubbish.
• If there are no bins around your area of work or neighbourhood, keep the rubbish with you until you can discard it safely.
• Alternatively, you can buy a bin, either alone or in concert with friends.That will be money well-spent on God’s work, instead of giving it out to 'moneydicious' Pastors who milk poor masses or to those Muslim-looking beggars who litter our streets.
• The alternative, go to the nearest office of the Environmental Protection Agency or any sanitation agency and request rubbish bins, or to ask for help with how to safely dispose off rubbish.
• Organise a communal labour in your neighbourhood and desilt that choked gutter next to the waakye seller, next to the taxi rank.
• Next time you think of urinating and defecating in a gutter or in a public place, next time you think of using public places and gutters as dumping sites for faeces, think about the wisdom of the cat and of your own stupidity: even the cat defecates in a more humane way than many Ghanaians.
• The state must also provide proper sanitation policies. We cannot fault some Ghanaians much for behaving lesser than the cat when there are simply no toilets around.
• Convince a pastor or imam to make the sanitation problem a special sermon topic once every month, for a number of months or even years.
• The above also goes for serious media outlets in the country: the sanitation problem must not suffer the knee-jerk, short-termist media sensationalism that we see on many national issues.
• Finally, and crucially, carry this message to a friend, sibling or neighbour and let them commit to a clean Ghana.

By any means necessary, we must rid Ghana of filth. We must do so knowing that indeed God wills it, and knowing that our present wellbeing depends on it.

Muhammad Dan Suleiman Email: mld.suleiman@gmail.com Twitter: @MDanSuleiman