By Philip Antoh
Patricia Asiedua Asiamah, the self-styled televangelist and former fetish priestess better known as Nana Agradaa, has emerged from eight months in Nsawam Prison with a new narrative: incarceration, she now tells her congregation, was a divine gift.
Preaching on 22 March to a church audience, Agradaa characterised her time behind bars as a transformative experience that strengthened her faith and clarified her evangelical mission. “What God has bestowed upon me through this journey is priceless and cannot be purchased with money,” she said, adding that she does not regret the imprisonment.
Her release, however, owes more to legal manoeuvring than divine intervention. Agradaa was originally sentenced on 3 July 2025 to 15 years by an Accra Circuit Court after being convicted of fraud by false pretences and deceptive advertising. The trial judge, Evelyn Asamoah, noted that she had “skilfully executed the offences” and shown no remorse.
A successful appeal saw the Amasaman High Court reduce the sentence to 12 months, deeming the original penalty excessively harsh. Under Ghana’s remission rules, she served two-thirds of the revised term before walking free.
Agradaa’s trajectory from fetish shrine operator to self-proclaimed prophet to convicted fraudster and now to redeemed evangelist has long blurred the lines between religious entrepreneurship and spectacle.
Her latest performance before the faithful, casting prison as spiritual refinement, suggests she intends to resume her ministry undeterred. Whether her congregation or the courts share that interpretation remains to be seen.