The Finance Minister, has been hit hard on his attempt to water down the outrageous and unconstitutional expenditures on the controversial National Cathedral project with an appearance on the national television; GTV to talk about the project which has since stalled for lack of funds despite a whopping GH¢200 million sunk into it.
Ken Ofori-Atta’s characteristic white garment and biblical quotes intersperse with the Lord God outing, has been described as “an unmitigated disaster” by Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, the Member of Parliament (MP) for North Tongu in the Volta Region, who has been at forefront with documents detailing the outrageous expenditures on the project been put up on the basis that the President, had bargained with God to make him President of Ghana and will intend build a cathedral for him.
“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. Is the executive mindful of the current situation? We shouldn’t snuff out our religiousness or spirituality because we are poor. The Lord will understand if we put our widows’ mite in there”, Mr Ofori-Atta said on state broadcaster, GTV on Sunday.
The Finance Minister asked critics of the National Cathedral project to be measured in their criticisms insisting “We can’t grow and sustain our transformation without spirituality”.
He claims that the Akufo-Addo government is mindful of taxpayers’ money being used to support the building of the National Cathedral and is strategizing to ensure that monies pumped into the construction are recouped within the shortest possible time after construction.
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For him, the current economic challenges should not deter the state from fulfilling its responsibility to build a monument that has huge investment potential.
But Okudzeto Ablakwa who took to his Facebook wall shortly after the Finance Minister’s appearance insisted he Minister “failed to provide any justification for the egregious constitutional breaches, particularly the cardinal affront of disbursing public funds without Parliamentary approval;
“He failed to provide any justification for the egregious constitutional breaches, particularly the cardinal affront of disbursing public funds without Parliamentary approval adding “he was unable to inform Ghanaians about the total cost of President Akufo-Addo’s cathedral project;
According to the MP, the Finance Minister also “couldn’t assist Ghanaians with answers on exactly how much is the contribution of the taxpayer and the specific amount he has unconstitutionally released so far;
“He was unable to provide contrary evidence to the many legal infractions we have accused government of, which include violating our procurement laws and illegally siphoning over GH¢32million to Sir David Adjaye contrary to the Architects Act – 1969 (NLCD 357);
“He wasn’t, unsurprisingly, able to refute our incontrovertible fact that despite the colossal unconstitutional releases, the contractors have abandoned the project due to lack of payments, raising major concerns about the true destination of millions of taxpayer funds.
The North Tongu MP advocated for the need to “Fear God” saying “as Christ demonstrated in that Jerusalem Temple when he took the whip for the first and only time, He does not tolerate the corruption and desecration of His Temple — for it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Let us Fear God.
Government is under pressure to abort its ambition for the National Cathedral project, given the country’s economic downturn and tough times being faced by the citizenry.
This was after the government recently released GH¢200 million to the National Cathedral Secretariat as additional seed money for the project.
But the Finance Minister believes the raging debate on the financial prudence and relevance of the National Cathedral is misguided.
“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.”
Ken Ofori- Atta, rather, wants critics not to lose sight of the real returns the National Cathedral project could generate to shore up the government’s revenue target.
“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 Minister added.
