Dr. Sekou Nkurmah, son of Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah, has spoken out against anti-gay laws and persecution of LGBTs in the West African nation.

Nkurmah said homosexuals should not be prosecuted despite the practice being ‘abnormal’ and offensive to Ghanaian culture in an interview with XYZ News.

Nkurmah said Ghana did not have to ‘accept what is wrong’ to tolerate homosexuals – although he did not think the mood in the country was ready for change yet.

He said opposing homosexual practices ‘does not mean people who are homosexuals should be prosecuted and so on – I think our society should find a way to addressing this problem.’

‘I think as human beings we need to obviously tolerate others and their ways and so on, but that does not mean that as a society we should accept what we think is wrong,’ Nkrumah said.

‘For now the door is closed on homosexuality and homosexual tolerance [but] I’m not too sure those of us who are straight, let’s put it that way, or “normal” would also condemn others because we have to be clear exactly how that person becomes homosexual or behaves in that abnormal way.’

Nkurmah did not speculate on why people became homosexual.

Currently Ghana has no explicit laws criminalizing homosexuality but a colonial era law banning ‘unnatural carnal knowledge’ has sometimes been applied to cases involving LGBT people and Nkurmah has called for the law to be clarified.

Nkurmah made the comments following Ghanaian Anglican Archbishop Yinkah Sarfo condemning comments by retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu that he would rather go to hell than a homophobic heaven.

‘Archbishop Tutu is respected in the Anglican Church and around the world but this time he has misfired and all Anglican Bishops from Africa, Asia and South America condemn his statement in no uncertain terms,’ Sarfo told Adom News.