Prophet Oduro, the senior pastor and founder of Alabaster International Ministries, has expressed his displeasure with the manner in which the president of Ghana is handling the National cathedral.
The religious leader, who revealed he is in support of the cathedral, told OB Nartey on No.1 FM’s mid-morning show “Nyame Nsa Wom” that the president and government’s approach is not appropriate.
“Anybody who will say there is no need for a national cathedral has missed the point because we have a national mosque,” He said. “The essence and the need for a national cathedral are 100 percent perfect but if we are not cautious, even Christians would claim that the approach is offensive to God”.
“Let me use the national mosque as an example of how the government is handling this situation; not a single cedi of our nation’s money was used to build the national mosque. It was constructed by the Turkish government and the Ghanaian Muslim community. Why can’t the same be said about the national cathedral? Why are we going to tax the nation for this?”
“There are a few things that are incorrect. The president made a solemn commitment to God. This pledge must be fulfilled, but not with this method. The objective is ideal. We require a national cathedral, but your technique is flawed,” Prophet Oduro continued.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, according to the preacher, “could have simply welcomed businessmen and women to Jubilee House and presented his financing request to them, he would be surprised that just one person would have given $100,000,000 toward the construction of the national cathedral.”
“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.
Recently, Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, in an interview with GTV, questioned if it was excessive to use state funds to construct the cathedral the President pledged God if he won the presidency.
he went forward to reveal that the state have spent less than one-thousandth of the expenditure on the project and that he is “very confident of raising revenue to be able to fund the project and more importantly, 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,” he continued.
Meanwhile, Mr. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, member of parliament for North Tongu, alleged that on October 29, 2020, a few weeks before the national elections, Mr. Ofori-Atta, acting on a request from President Akufo-Chief Addo’s of Staff, authorized the release of GHS142,762,500.00 for the national cathedral.
According to Mr. Ablakwa, the government hid information contrary to legal standards. “this huge sum of GHS142,7 million, they deliberately neglected to report it as part of their 2020 spending disclosures during the 2021 budget debate in Parliament.”
Also in a Facebook post, the legislator stated that the Akufo-Addo administration had spent closs to GHS200 million of taxpayer funds on a cathedral that was first offered to Ghanaians as a personal pledge to God that will not be performed with taxpayer dollars.
According to him, this almost GHS200 million cathedral gate has become the largest presidential scandal in Ghana’s history.
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