Ghanaians were shocked Monday when the Bank of Ghana swiftly announced that two Ghanaian banks – Capital Bank and UT Bank – were both insolvent and had been sold to GCB Bank.
The Bank was thus taking over the operations and infrastructure of the two banks, helping save the deposits of customers who would otherwise been in distress had the two banks gone bankrupt.
Being the Ghana we all know and love, it did not take long for reasons behind the bank’s collapse to be sent into the supernatural realm.
Prince Kofi Amoabeng, the founder of UT and for a long period its top official, had said in an interview years ago that he does not pay tithes to any church. According to Amoabeng, he carries out enough philanthropic works on his own and sees no sense in giving 10% of his hard earned money to any church.

“I don’t pay tithe. I would not give 10 percent and nobody can force me to give 10 percent of my money to anybody. So I don’t pay tithe. I do all sort of philanthropic jobs myself. I see where there is the need for me to help and I help.” Amoabeng said at the time.

He continued, “I don’t have to give it to somebody who then decides where to put the money. So it is my hard earned money and I should put it where I want to put it.”

This years old interview was then dug up, and the case was made as to why the collapse of UT Bank could be traced to Amoabeng’s refusal to pay tithes. A lengthy post showed why Amoabeng’s attempt to ‘outsmart’ God is what has come back to bite him in the a$$ and cause the collapse of his bank.
The post read:

“Prince Amoabeng, former CEO of UT bank once said that, he doesn’t believe in tithing and therefore do not pay tithes.
He further added that, it is only fools who go and give their monies to pastors in the name of tithing.
He was very happy and proud when he said that.
_But three years after his ignoramus statement, I woke up today to only read from newspapers that his UT empire is on the verge on collapsing and GCB has taken over_.
I wonder what might be going through his head now.
You’re not wiser than God. Tithing is not something you give to God in a form of favour. Tithing is what you owe God. Don’t let anyone deceive you.
Don’t try to outsmart God.”

Now if the collapse of UT Bank had occurred in a vacuum, this case would have been somewhat compelling to many others, no matter how insane it sounds. However, UT Bank did not collapse alone, it was accompanied by Capital Bank, which has its own interesting supernatural tale behind it.
A few weeks ago, the International Central Gospel Church’s annual Greater Works conference went viral after a photo from the event showed the amount of money required from people for certain ‘miracles’ to be sought from God for them.
For as high as $5,000, one could get the ‘millionaire status’ – whilst other amounts could get you a 24 hour miracle and several other favours from God.
Attendees were giving a bank account number – from Capital Bank – to which they could deposit their sums for whichever miracle they desired.
Capital Bank, a Ghanaian bank, counts among its shareholders and board of directors none other than Pastor Mensa Otabil, founder and General Overseer of ICGC.
So in many ways, the bank is Otabil and church’s in equal measure, yet it went right down the drain alongside UT Bank when it was sinking.
Otabil presumably pays his tithes, and some unconfirmed reports even claims the pastor and his prayer warriors did all the praying they could in the bank’s final days to save it from insolvency, but those prayers and tithing quite obviously did not work.
This raises quite the dilemma for whoever wants to use the UT Bank collapse as a cautionary tale for tithing, because obviously in the case of someone like Otabil, tithing does not seem to have worked one jot.
So now we are all left in a quandary as to whether the way forward to prevent financial calamity is giving God the 10% of our hard earned money like Otabil, or simply ignoring him and doing our own thing like Amoabeng. Evidently both eventually lead to the same place.
So we’re left back at where we started – to pay or not to pay?