President John Dramani Mahama has said his administration will have a relook at the controversial National Cathedral project and raise funds to complete it if need be.
He says the fund allocated to the project is so much, compared to similar edifices in other jurisdictions. The President has said the cost will be reviewed so they can seek funding to erect it.
Mahama was speaking at his first National Prayer and Thanksgiving Service in Accra Sunday, January 12, 2025, when he made the comments, saying the project can be completed at a much reasonably lower cost.
“This project must be completed at a reasonable cost. Given the current circumstances that Ghana is facing, it makes no sense to undertake such a project at a whooping sum of $400 million. I am informed that the National Ecumenical Centre in Abuja, which serves all Christian denominations in Nigeria, was built at a cost of $30 million.
“I believe we can achieve this project at a much more reasonable figure, and together, we can raise the necessary funds,” he said.
The President also disclosed that the project, if it warrants completion, might have a different location either than the heart of the capital city where it was ongoing and stalled.
“Such a reconsideration of this project might even include changing the current site that was chosen for the project,” he stated.
Just as the previous government promised, Mahama added that the construction of the cathedral should not involve the use of state funds.
“On the future of the project, the Cathedral, I believe that all of us, as Christians, must forge a consensus on how to achieve this project without recourse to public funds,” he relayed.
President Akufo-Addo promised God to build him a cathedral in 2016 if he won the election, which he started but could only manage a foundation after spending a whooping US$58million.
Despite assuring Ghanaians that the project was going to be privately funded, then Finance Minister, Kenneth Nana Yaw Ofori-Atta, allocated state funds to it, spiraling series of controversies.
Some of the members on the Board of Trustees, usually men of God, resigned when issues of financial malfeasance and other corruption and corruption-related matters came up.
Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, who made a lot of revelations about the project regarding the rot that characterised it, petitioned the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to investigate the malfeasance.
After the probe, CHRAJ recommended that the Auditor-General conducts a forensic audit to determine what went wrong and, if necessary, prosecute those found to be responsible for any wrongdoing.
Source : Felix Anim-Appau
