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Lawyer Maurice Ampaw is often described as controversial. It is apt. Controversy sticks to him like mud to mudfish; he swims in it. The lawyer, who rose to fame during the NPP Petition case before the Supreme Court as an expert summariser, clearly loves the limelight and knows how to attract it. Among �controversies� attributed to Dr Ampaw was his claim to have information about Castro, the missing musician; he reportedly also advocated the legalisation of marijuana. However, the lawyer needs support for his most recent free legal advice because instead of it being controversial it is straightforward common sense. Dr Ampaw has reportedly rounded on pastors who fail to perform the required miracles for clients who have paid money for the service. Lawyer Ampaw has a thing about pastors. In the past, he had accused some unnamed pastors of smoking marijuana and lambasted them for an assortment of bad behaviour. This current advice may go down well among Ghanaians and hopefully some might even act on it. According to media reports, the popular lawyer said that pastors and prophets who collect money from people but fail to deliver the promised relief can be sued by their disappointed clientele. This opinion appears to be based on the longstanding and ancient principle of quid pro quo � literally, �something for something� in Latin. This means that when you pay something to somebody in exchange for goods or services you are within your right to expect the other party to provide what you paid for. This makes enormous sense and applies to all kinds of transactions. So, why should unmet expectations of �religious� clients be any different? Well, promises of miracles by pastors and prophets are expected to be manifested not in the flesh but in the unseen world of spirits and unworldly beings. Take the example of a case in which a pastor sells anointing oil to a person who has been told is the victim of witchcraft. The pastor�s intervention via the anointing oil is expected to work spiritually against the witchcraft in ways that the eye cannot see. Now, here is the tricky bit: only the pastor knows how the anti-witchcraft business will be carried out so he or she alone can say whether the thing has worked or not. But look at it in another way: there is always a physical or psychological relief being sought by the client, which is what would have brought them to the pastor in the first place. Normally, it is about generalised or specific poverty, lack of opportunity, childlessness, or as is very often the case these days, looking for a husband (yep, let�s face it; it is more of a woman thing). In that sense, it is easy to prove whether the thing has worked or not because only the client/victim can truly tell. If you are confused by where this is going, you are not alone. All over this country, hundreds of thousands of people, - men, women and children, but mostly women, are staying at �prayer camps�. Some of these prayer camps are in dreadful conditions. A few years ago, I traced my nephew to a prayer camp where he had taken his baby daughter for deliverance. My nephew and the child, who was about three years old, both slept on the floor in a very insanitary camp house without walls. They shared the open-sided room with several other people whose diseases could be infectious. It took me, a non-medical person, to see plainly the child was suffering from a throat infection, possibly acute tonsillitis. Of course, my nephew had concluded, or been persuaded to the view that the little girl�s suffering was the result of an evil force that could only be overcome by prayers. My explanation that prayers worked together with medical treatment did not cut much ice with my nephew, nor the further explanation that medicine is a gift from God to humankind. The poor child had to endure more suffering before being sent to a district hospital where a minor form of surgery corrected the problem. The saddest part of this episode, which is so common in these prayer camps, is that the child�s possible tonsillitis turned septic at the camp. People pick up all kinds of serious illness at these camps that dot the territory of our beloved republic. Of course, this is not a phenomenon confined to Ghana. One of the reasons for the quick spread of Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone is the practice of sending sick people to prayer camps. People stricken by Ebola at the disease�s most infectious periods were sent to prayer camps where they died. Of course, having been handled by people who had no requisite training, equipment or attire, these dead bodies infected more people, contributing to the death of so many people. One popular myth paraded on radio by a group of pastors, including Ghanaians, in Liberia was that Ebola was God�s way of signaling His displeasure at the desecration of the State Mansion overlooking Monrovia. Such pastors have contributed to the spread of Ebola denial which continues to this day in parts of the three main affected countries. Certainly, the absence of good and affordable medical facilities in Africa continue to be one reason why these prayer camps are so popular. For example, in Nigeria these camps constitute a major industry. On the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, one encounters not less than three mega-camps; one of them is so large, running for several kilometres, that the government is said to have considered making the camp an autonomous district. It is a fact that the vast majority of people going to these prayer camps are looking for solutions to their problems, and they are not all necessarily health related. Possibly, many people receive the reliefs they look for, but it is the manner in which some pastors conduct the business that has provoked so much pain and outrage. Many of these pastors and prophets are openly selling various oils and �holy water� to people who come to them in distress. The pastors convince these people that using the oil or so-called holy water will alleviate their problems or give them the relief they are looking for. Lawyer Ampaw is saying that the sale of these oils constitutes a form of contract between the pastors and their clients which can be adjudicated in court. I think we need to go further and regulate this business. There is no doubt that these prayer camps and pray-for-me syndrome is a form of business, and a booming one at that. Ideally, religion should be allowed to regulate its own conduct by its own ethics; this is no longer a sufficient response to the exploitation of people, usually very poor and vulnerable people who will have neither the courage nor resources to sue errant pastors. This is not to tar all pastors with the same brush. There are many men and women of God who look after their flock and even strangers with kindness and real consideration. Personal belief in prayer has taught me its benefits. However, there are bad people out there exploiting the poor and the vulnerable in the name of God. The state must protect the people from all kinds of bad people; what these people call themselves � pastors, mallams, seers, �fetish�, prophets, prelates or even popes, should not matter. It is the manner of their conduct that will tell the good from the bad. The state must establish an agency that sets out terms for such businesses in the same way that all other businesses are conducted. As for us, we should pray for these bad ones to change their ways. Meanwhile Dr Ampaw is described as the President and Founder of his NGO; almost an Overseer!