With the spiraling challenges confronting the Ghanaian people especially in the education sector, former President John Dramani Mahama, is convinced God will not be pleased with the National Cathedral project where government wants to sink millions of dollars to build.
According to the flag bearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), those monies could have been used to secure textbooks and furniture for school children who have stayed five years without any, despite the change in the educational curriculum.
Speaking at the Wa Technical Institute as part of his ‘Building Ghana Tour’, John Mahama bemoaned the wastage of almost US$60 million on the project which has given Ghanaians nothing but a hole.
“So far US$58 million of public money has been spent just to dig a deep hole and you have to ask yourself, is it justified in this day and age when children do not have desks in schools, when children do not have textbooks for five years, even though we’ve come out with a new curriculum, because we say there is no money and you say we should use $450 million dollars to build a cathedral, even God will be angry with us,” he lamented Friday, March 08, 2024.
He continued that since the cathedral is a personal promise made by then candidate Akufo-Addo to God, he cannot waste public funds on it to burden taxpayers. He has been explaining that taxes paid by Muslims and persons of other faith cannot be used to build a cathedral for only Christians.
“It is one person’s conviction. The President says that he made a pledge to God that if he won the election he will build a cathedral for Him. So it is his personal pledge and if he wants to build it he must gather people who support that conviction to support him to build it.
“We were told that public funds were not going to be used for the cathedral but eventually we found that the Ministry of Finance was releasing public taxes and our taxes are paid by not only Christians, they are paid by Muslims [as well]. And so we can’t use public funds including the fund of people from other denominations to build a cathedral for Christians alone,” John Mahama reemphasised.
Government has so far spent GHC339 million towards the construction of the cathedral but is still at its foundation stage.
Some Minority MPs and NDC faithful Wednesday, March 06, 2024, marched to the premises to symbolically commission the cathedral to mock the government after promising in 2021 that the project was going to be commissioned this year at the said date.
NDC MPs symbolically ‘commission’ non-existent National Cathedral to mock gov’t
