Shakahola pastor gets 200 years in Kenya. In Ghana, no law licenses a church or vets a pastor

On Friday 6 November 2026, Justice Diana Kavedza Mochache of the High Court in Mombasa sentenced the Kenyan pastor Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison: two 100-year terms, to be served back to back. On 19 October the court had convicted him and 28 co-accused of 191 murders. 190 of the victims were children.

Of the 191, 183 were starved to death and eight children were suffocated, strangled or beaten, the prosecution told the court. The co-accused received between 10 and 160 years. The State had asked for the death penalty. The judge refused, saying a living convict might still reveal where missing children are buried.

Investigators have exhumed 429 bodies from Shakahola forest in Kilifi County since April 2023. The court found that followers were told to fast to death to meet Jesus, with children to die first. According to AFP, Mackenzie founded Good News International in 2003 and told followers the world would end in August 2023.

Warnings from 2017

Mackenzie was in the hands of the Kenyan State three times before the graves were found. In 2017 he was charged with radicalisation and keeping children out of school; he was acquitted on 29 October 2021. In 2019 he was charged again and released on bail. In March 2023 he was released on cash bail once more. Kenya's then Interior Cabinet Secretary, Kithure Kindiki, later told the Senate that most of the bodies were of people killed after 22 March 2023.

Kenya's own inquiries found that the warnings were not acted on. A Senate ad hoc committee chaired by Senator Danson Mungatana reported in October 2023 that the Kilifi County Security Committee knew and did not act, and named about 11 police officers for sanction. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) said in March 2024 that officials "unjustifiably failed to act on credible and actionable reports", some filed at Langobaya and Malindi police stations from 2017.

President William Ruto's taskforce, chaired by Rev Mutava Musyimi, recommended in July 2024 a fresh registration of all religious bodies. Senator Mungatana's separate Senate bill to regulate religious groups was withdrawn after churches protested. According to Christianity Today, Ruto's Cabinet approved a government draft in July 2025 and clergy groups demanded its withdrawal. QMS could not confirm whether it has become law.

Ghana: no law that licenses a church

Ghana has no law today that licenses a church or vets a pastor. Churches register with the Office of the Registrar of Companies as companies limited by guarantee, the same route as an NGO; some older bodies are incorporated under the Trustees (Incorporation) Act, 1962. According to the US State Department's 2019 religious freedom report, there is no penalty for not registering.

The last attempt to register churches came from Flt Lt Jerry Rawlings' PNDC government. The Religious Bodies (Registration) Law, 1989 (PNDCL 221), passed on 14 June 1989, required every religious body to register. Five days later the PNDC froze the activities of the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons. Major churches resisted the law, and it was suspended in 1991. QMS found no record of it being enforced since.

In 2019, under President Nana Akufo-Addo's NPP government, Speaker Aaron Mike Oquaye said Parliament would welcome a bill on "self-styled pastors and prophets" and gave a joint committee one month to study it. The National Peace Council backed legislation, the Christian Council favoured self-regulation, the Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council welcomed the debate but wanted the theological community to lead, and the Charismatic Bishops' Conference opposed it. Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams was reported by Graphic as saying: "You can't regulate faith." No bill was drafted, and QMS found no such bill laid in Parliament since.

On 18 February 2026, answering a question from Kwadaso MP Prof Kingsley Nyarko (NPP), the Minister for Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, Ahmed Ibrahim, told Parliament that more than 2,200 churches are registered in Greater Accra and that about 98% of them have a single owner. The Registrar keeps no national total, the Ghana News Agency reported. In February the minister also cited PNDCL 221 as the basis for recognising churches, although the law was suspended in 1991.

The plan of President John Mahama's NDC government is a Digital Church Registry: churches update their status every year, local assemblies keep their own registers, and the data is shared with the Registrar and the Ministry of Justice. The plan does not include a new bill.

Article 21 of the 1992 Constitution protects the freedom to practise any religion. In the 2021 census, 71.3% of Ghanaians said they were Christian and 19.9% Muslim; Pentecostal and Charismatic churches alone account for 31.6% of the population.

Prayer camps: banned in 2012, still found in 2023

The best-documented risk in Ghana is in prayer camps. In its report Like a Death Sentence (2 October 2012), Human Rights Watch described visits to eight prayer camps and three psychiatric hospitals. At Mount Horeb prayer camp in January 2012, it found about 120 of 135 residents chained 24 hours a day. Staff at seven of the eight camps told HRW that fasting cures mental illness.

The Mental Health Act, 2012 (Act 846), passed under President John Evans Atta Mills' NDC government, bans torture, cruelty and other inhuman treatment, including shackling. It provides for Visiting Committees in every region, a tribunal and a mental health levy. In November 2013 the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Méndez, visited Ghana, saw people chained and forced to fast at prayer camps, and said the practices constitute torture.

On 30 June 2017 the Mental Health Authority freed 16 people from chains at Nyakumasi prayer camp, and a national ban on shackling was enforced from October 2017. HRW found more than 60 people chained or caged, including children, at five camps and healing centres in late 2022, and said in a 2022 submission to the UN that there had been "no accountability" for chaining. In October 2023 it found ten people chained at Mount Horeb (Mamfe) and Pure Power (Adeiso). At that point only five of Ghana's 16 regions had Visiting Committees, and the mental health levy had never been set up, HRW said.

In January 2026 a security source told AFP that camps "still chain patients but hide them when NGOs or journalists are visiting".

The courts act after the fact

Ghana's courts have convicted pastors once cases reached them. In September 2018 Bishop Daniel Obinim and two other pastors pleaded guilty at an Accra Circuit Court to assaulting two teenagers who were flogged in church in 2016, and were fined ₵12,000 in total. In September 2021 an Accra Circuit Court jailed Pastor Daniel Akuffo for 15 years for having sex with a 14-year-old under the pretext of exorcising witchcraft. In January 2023 Rev Edward Buabeng of Liberty Vineyard International Ministries was convicted on 173 counts of defrauding by false pretences.

Each case followed a complaint after the harm was done. QMS found no case of a death at a Ghanaian prayer camp ending in a murder or manslaughter conviction.

As of Saturday 7 November, QMS had found no public statement on the Mackenzie sentence from the Christian Council of Ghana, the Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council, the Catholic Bishops' Conference or the National Peace Council.

The WHAT HAPPENED? episode Let's Not Wait For Our Forest sets the Kenyan case against Ghana's law, its prayer camps and its courts.