Expensive Funerals Any Reason for That?

By Augustina Brown

Ghanaians spend money on funeral instead of helping the poor and the needy

All over Ghana, we witness the kind of funeral and burial services that go on almost every weekend. 

This has caused most people to raise an eye-brow over this particular issue of expensive and competitive funerals in our country. Both the rich and the poor spend so much on the dead than on the living.

Burial services of late have become so fashionable that even the poor have to comb everywhere in search of money to bury their lost loved ones.


Why must this happen at the moment when everyone is trying so hard to at least have all three-squared meals? Does this mean we cherish the dead more than the living? What is the reason behind these expensive funerals in our country?

How can funeral become a competition that we have to invest so much in the dead instead of the living through expensive funerals all in the name of paying last respect to the deceased? 

There are so many poor and needy people in our country today who need money for one reason or the other to be able to survive.

We all become so interested in buying expensive cloths, coffins and keeping the dead in expensive morgues but forget about the trauma the widow and children have to go through after the burial service of their family member.

Why don’t we save that money for these people who have been left behind by the deceased instead of throwing them on the above mentioned expensive things?

The dead must be given decent burials and not expensive ones. Paying last respect doesn’t call for expensive cloths, coffins and different varieties of expensive drinks with some communities burying their dead with money, jewelry and other expensive things.

People become so concerned with very expensive funerals because they want their funeral to over-shadow that of their colleagues in the same community. 

Also, they are so much concerned with expensive funerals because they want to display their wealth and want people to know their capability of burying their family and loved ones.

We should ask ourselves, will the dead enjoy all these things in the name of paying last respect to them? Why don’t we show respect and care to them when they are alive rather than showing that respect and care to them after their death?

The most painful aspect of this is that, when the deceased was sick and suffering, getting money to cure him or herself was very difficult but money was not so scarce after the person had died. Why do we appear so wicked to the sick, poor and the needy but spend lavishly after they pass away.

We should learn to reduce huge sum of money we throw about during funerals all in the name of paying last respect to the dead. 

We should start showing respect and care for each other now that we are alive and not wait until we lose our friends, family members and neighbours before we pay our last respect to them.

We shouldn’t also use funerals to compete among ourselves to show how rich we are. 

Let us learn not to ignore the poor and the needy and spend on the dead. Like the Holy Book says, ‘Let the dead bury the dead’.