The General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana, has said even though the Church supports President Nana Akufo-Addo and his government’s national cathedral project, the administration must come clean and transparent on the whole venture that has swallowed Ghana’s GHC200 million without a single cement block laid.
“Well, you know this is the baby of the government and the President; we should not lose sight of that very important part of this whole process”, Dr Cyril Fayose, said adding, “even though the churches had willingly come on board, it’s still dear to the heart of the president and the government. So, if things are not moving on well, they may support.”
The demand from the Christian, comes a few days after Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, revealed that the project, which was initially designed to cost US$100 million, now will cost US$350 million, leaving questions as to who and how the project was quantified.
Documents have also emerged that Akufo-Addo’s presidency through the Chief of Staff, Akosua Frema Osei-Opare, secretly pushed for the payment of US$23.750 million to Sir David Adjaye, a crony of the President’s family; a self-professed gay man.
The Jubilee House used a “Single Source” procurement method to appoint Mr Adjaye’s architectural firm Messrs. Sir David Adjaye & Associates “as Lead Consultant, Construction and Supervision for the construction of the National Christian Cathedral”.
This was captured in a letter from the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) dated December 17, 2018, and signed by ex-CEO of the PPA, AB Adjei, approving the deal for Sir David Adjaye who at the time was not registered to practice in Ghana as an architect according to the Ghana Institute of Architects (GIA) established in 1962 as a professional body with legal backing.
Dr Fayose, had stated “I don’t think there’s anything wrong if the government supports a religious activity. And I know that in the past previous governments have supported religious activities severally”.
“What is important is if the government does so, to come clean to put everything on the table and let the whole world know that this is what government is doing to help Christians or to help the nation in its quest for the divine”.
“And we do that in several other ways, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but they must first come clean”, Dr Fayose told Accra-based Joy News but in the same interview, Dr. Fayose, opined that the government of Ghana can use money from the heritage fund to construct the National Cathedral but insisted on transparency.
“Let us be transparent about some of these things, and there will be no problem,” he said.
Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, also wondered if using state funds to build the national cathedral that President Nana Akufo-Addo promised to put up for God if he won the presidency was too much.
“At any point in time when these buildings were built in Europe, was it ever the right time? How do we fund it will become the question”, he asked in an interview on state-owned GTV on Sunday, 12 June 2022.
“Is the executive mindful of the current situation? We shouldn’t snuff out our religiousness or spirituality because we are poor”, he noted.
“The Lord will understand if we put our widow’s mite in there”, Mr. Ofori-Atta noted.
“That question being asked is that: Are we spending money from state coffers? Is that too much to do because we are politicizing it? Do we really want to stop it? That is going to be my question.”
He said: “As a minister of finance, we are looking at resources and how much we put in there at every point in time that is sensible and, so, as we speak, we have spent less than one-thousandth of our expenditure on that.”
“I am very confident of raising revenue to be able to fund this, and then, more importantly, if I want to look into the economics of it, I truly see an overwhelming capacity that this will pay off.
“Typically, I am looking at an internal rate of return, so we should put this in mind”, the president’s cousin noted.
The Christian Council is not the first to call for transparency on the project.
Recently, Prophet Dr Kofi Oduro of the Alabaster International Ministry, said President Nana Akufo-Addo is redeeming his personal national cathedral pledge to God through lies and deception.
According to Prophet Oduro, the president and the government said no national funds would be used for the cathedral, but that has turned out not to be the case now.
Prophet Oduro, who supports the idea of a national cathedral, however, told OB Nartey on the maiden edition of No.1 FM’s mid-morning show on Monday, 13 June 2022, that the way the president and the government are going about it is wrong.
“Anybody who will say there is no need for a national cathedral has missed the point because we have a national mosque. The essence and the need for a national cathedral are 100 percent perfect, but the way we are going about it, if we are not careful, even Christians will say it offends God”, he said.
“The way government is going about this whole thing; let me use the national mosque for example, not a cedi of this nation was used for the construction of the national mosque. It was built by the Turkish government and the Muslim community in Ghana. Why can’t we do the same with the national cathedral? Why are we going to tax this on the nation?”
“There are certain things that are not right. The president made a personal vow to God. That vow must be redeemed but not this strategy, not this method”.
“The purpose is perfect. We need a national cathedral [but] your methodology is wrong”, he told the president, insisting: “Absolutely wrong”.
“You told us that state fund would not be used. No state funds are required. That’s deception. That’s a lie. You are building something for God”, he said.
In his view, President Akufo-Addo could have just invited businessmen and women to the Jubilee House and put his funding request before them and would have been surprised that just one person would have given $100,000,000 toward the construction of the national cathedral.
“But the way we are going about it, we are going to drag the names of all these men of integrity on the board of the national cathedral into the mud”.
“We’ll destroy their reputation with this national cathedral”, he warned.
On the use of the Heritage Fund, the Christian Council scribe, Dr Cyril Fayose, said this should only be done when the current financing challenges of the cathedral continues, adding the cathedral is very important for Ghana.
According to him, at the time when the idea of the national cathedral was being sold to the Christian Council and the Christian community, he was convinced the project was of national importance and could prove profitable for the country.
“In fact I had attended a meeting of the national cathedral where matters were explained to us about the importance of the cathedral for the development of the nation and also for tourism purposes and so on.
“Thus I was convinced that if we cannot raise the money as member churches or churches to build the cathedral why not take some monies from like petroleum funds for instance, the heritage funds as we did with some other projects in the country, build it as an investment and recoup the interest back into the fund.
“I thought something like that was possible until I heard that actually the government was putting some funding into it,” he said
He noted that even though building a national cathedral was not a bad gesture, it would be beneficial to all involved that the government becomes more transparent concerning how it’s funding the project in order to avoid any falling out.
“So it’s not bad if the government supports the government supports the project, but they must let the public know; it shouldn’t be done under the carpet,” he said.
