National Cathedral, what should we do with it as a country?

Author: Annie OSABUTEY

This week, thanks to a report by the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo’s pet project, the National Cathedral, is back in the news with a recommendation from the Office of the Special Prosecutor. (OSP) begin an investigation into procurement violations committed by members of the Board of Trustees.

After reading excerpts from the report, I returned to an article I read in 2018 by a US-based Nigerian art critic, Princeton University professor, Professor Chika Okek-Agulu, who said critics should not fight the project.

In the specified article – published in the Internet version New York Times dated April 14, 2018, under the headline “Ghana deserves this cathedral.” “Don’t fight it,” Professor Okeke-Agulu, among other things, argued that the project “signals that the country is ready to consolidate the gains of decades of democracy.”

The article comes amid public doubts about the veracity of the source of funding for the project, especially when Ghanaians were told that public money would not be used separately from the land that would be donated.

Contrary to this promise, the government has so far invested more than US$50 million in what remains hole. So the question is, what should we do with the cathedral? How does an economy supported by the International Monetary Fund allocate additional resources to the cathedral?

According to Professor Okeke-Agulu, those advocating for basic needs in the face of a project of this magnitude must recognize that for Africa to rise, it must strive to move beyond basic needs. He called the idea that “until there is a mosquito net in every home in Africa and a school in every village, concrete dreams and inspiring designs cannot be built” as “disturbing.”

Again, he based his arguments on what he argued was opposition raised by colonial governments in the 1900s to the building of universities in West Africa, as well as “the defunding of higher education institutions in many parts of the continent, starting in the 1980s (because poor countries couldn’t afford it).

I’m not sure what facts he might have about the cathedral and the reservation, and why a President, mindful of the problems facing his people, would pour public funds into a pet project that seeks to satisfy egos and religious beliefs at the expense of critical sectors of the economy.

No country can eradicate poverty. This never happened. Despite its economic strength, a significant portion of the U.S. population still struggles with income inequality. The difference in leadership is that the American leadership will seek to direct this money to help its underserved population to a level that they are comfortable with through well-designed programs that are nationalistic in nature. On the other hand, ours invested this amount in the pit, despite the fact that they swore on heaven and earth that public money would not be used.

Those who have doubts about the project do so out of concern and goodwill for the welfare of the state, and not out of anger or personal hatred of the president, as some of his supporters suggest.

For those who have doubts about the project, they point to the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, built by the late Felix Houphouet-Boigny, then president of Ivory Coast, and what became of it. During construction, most people warned against this. But the dictator felt the need to boost his personal ego with the building and thus defeated everyone. He even persecuted others in exile.

Today, the project remains a haunting example of how not to waste public funds to stroke a leader’s ego. Interestingly, Professor Okeke-Agulu referred to the basilica and called it “the great white elephant of the dictators of the past.”

The “conciliarists’” argument is that the country did not solve all its problems before the National Theater and Conference Center were built. This is true. But the leadership at the time also did not say that they were going to use personal finance to fulfill their promise to God. The same can be said about the Jubilee House. Opinions were divided; but the sitting president at the time did not say that he intended to use personal funds to complete it.

Therefore, the cathedral cannot be in the same argument. I believe that no matter what doubts some of the public may have, if a mountain of lies had not been told, people would have rallied around it. This is people’s distrust of the entire project.

Speaking at the centenary celebration of the Ga Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana held at the Black Star Square in Accra, he said those opposed to the project were like the biblical Sanballat and Tobiah who opposed the wall that Nehemiah wanted to build at the time.

“Just like Sanballat and Tobiah, there are people in Nehemiah’s time who do not share my views on the construction of the National Cathedral. I respect their right to have a different opinion, but I am confident in my decision thanks to the huge number of enthusiastic supporters of this project, the spiritual dimension of which is limitless.”

The president has several weeks left before he leaves office, and the project is still in the development stage. pit level, do he and his associates think that whoever takes over should still use public money to complete their personal promise to God?