Nathaniel Oduro, the founder and executive director of ProActif Global and NAPLUS Ghana, is concerned that “transactional sex,” the unrestrained act of having sex in exchange for favours, is driving more young people to get HIV/AIDS.
Speaking in an exclusive interview on a radio station in Kumasi, Mr. Oduro, whose organization aims to give Ghanaian youth the power to make knowledgeable decisions about their sexual health and relationships, pointed out that the practice is not unique to the Ashanti region.
‘Students giving sex to Lecturers in return for good grades, students giving sex to colleague students to take money or favor is high, this situation is not exclusive in Kumasi, but the whole of Ghana, it’s very prevalent among the youth”, he lamented.
“Two years ago, the Director General of the AIDS Commission attested to this fact that old men are intentionally infecting the younger generation with AIDS, and that is because of the transnational sex which is high, that is the nature of what is happening”
“Sometimes you can’t blame the student, the economic conditions fuel some of these things, they need to pay school fees, provision and other things so they take on multiple partners to satisfy the need or want and this can result in AIDS or STI’s”, he explained.
He suggested that some of these social evils were caused by the breakdown of family values in Ghanaian society and called for a concentrated effort to address some of these problems.
“Today our society is broken, where I grew up you didn’t need to have your parents around to correct you when you go wrong, even a stranger or the next-door neighbor could correct you or put you in orders. But now who are you to do that, you can’t correct the daughter or son of your next-door neighbor”
“When a student travels from Volta region to Tech, he or she does not have a relative to check on him and nobody does, so they end up doing whatever they want”, he bemoaned.