Akufo-Addo’s ‘private’ cathedral sidelines Dag, ex-Presby Moderator; it’s ‘drowning in sea of naked lies’ – Ablakwa

North Tongu MP Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has said: “Incorporation documents I have obtained from the Registrar General exposes another false claim contained in the 7-page June 17, 2022 press release by the National Cathedral Secretariat and signed by Executive Director, Dr. Paul Opoku-Mensah”.

The opposition lawmaker said: “Contrary to the information provided in the said press statement (see page 5) and on the Nicodemusly updated national cathedral website (after we exposed the Pastor Otabil deception), to the effect that all the Board of Trustees have been registered as Directors of the National Cathedral of Ghana; we note, surprisingly, that the venerable Bishop Dag Heward-Mills, Presiding Bishop of the Lighthouse Group of Churches; and the esteemed Rev. Prof. Cephas Omenyo, former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, were not registered as directors on the incorporation date of 18th July, 2019”.

The two “revered” clergymen, Mr Okudzeto noted, “have, at all material times, been clearly left out, and substituted with the following names: Samuel Antwi and Kingsley Ofosu Ntiamoah”.

“Why then is the National Cathedral Secretariat misleading the Ghanaian public and the world that all the published trustees are registered as directors?” he asked.

“One wonders if Bishop Dag Heward-Mills and Rev. Prof. Cephas Omenyo are aware that despite the public misrepresentations, their names have been patently omitted from the list of eminent registered directors?”

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Mr Ablakwa, who has made a lot of exposés on the national cathedral project, said, in a Facebook post: “Another troubling falsehood we have detected is that even though the June 17 press release claims that the National Cathedral of Ghana is a ‘state-owned company’ and, thus, a ‘public and not a private’ entity, the incorporation documents in our possession reveals rather curiously that the National Cathedral of Ghana is registered as private [entity]”.

“The list of falsehoods, misrepresentations, opacity, lawlessness and blatant corruption associated with this cathedral project is now a bottomless pit”, he noted.

“Christians in Ghana may have to declare a 40-day intense fasting and prayer to purge and rescue Akufo-Addo’s drowning cathedral of lies”, Mr Ablakwa proposed.

About a week ago, Prophet Dr Kofi Oduro of the Alabaster International Ministry said President Nana Akufo-Addo is redeeming his personal national cathedral pledge to God through lies and deception.

According to Prophet Oduro, the President and the government said no national funds would be used for the cathedral but that has turned out not to be the case now.

Prophet Oduro, who says he supports the idea of a national cathedral, however, told OB Nartey on the maiden edition of No.1 FM’s mid-morning show on Monday, 13 June 2022 that the way the president and the government are going about it is wrong.

“Anybody who will say there is no need for a national cathedral has missed the point because we have a national mosque. The essence and the need for a national cathedral is 100 per cent perfect but the way we are going about it, if we are not careful, even Christians will say it offends God”, he said.

“The way government is going about this whole thing; let me use the national mosque for example: not a cedi of this nation was used for the construction of the national mosque. It was built by the Turkish government and the Muslim community in Ghana. Why can’t we do the same with the national cathedral? Why are we going to tax this on the nation?”

“There are certain things that are not right. The president made a personal vow to God. That vow must be redeemed but not this strategy, not this method”.

“The purpose is perfect. We need a national cathedral [but] your methodology is wrong”, he told the president, insisting: “Absolutely wrong”.

“You told us that state fund would not be used. Now state funds are required. That’s deception. That’s a lie. You are building something for God”, he said.

In his view, President Akufo-Addo could have just invited businessmen and women to the Jubilee House and put his funding request before them and would be surprised that just one person would have given $100,000,000 toward the construction of the national cathedral.

“But 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.

Prior to his Prophet Oduro’s comments, Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta had wondered if using state funds to build the national cathedral that President Nana Akufo-Addo promised to put up for God, if he won the presidency, was too much.

“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”, he asked in an interview on state-owned GTV on Sunday, 12 June 2022.

“Is the executive mindful of the current situation? We shouldn’t snuff out our religiousness or spirituality because we are poor”, he noted.

“The Lord will understand if we put our widow’s mite in there”, Mr Ofori-Atta noted.

“That question being asked is that: Are we spending money from state coffers? Is that too much to do because we are politicising it? Do we really want to stop it? That is going to be my question.”

He said: “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 president’s cousin noted.

Mr Ablakwa had alleged that on the 29th of October 2020, a few weeks before the national elections, Mr Ofori-Atta, acting on a request by President Akufo-Addo’s Chief of Staff, authorised the release of GHS142,762,500.00 for national cathedral planned activities.

According to Mr Ablakwa, contrary to legal requirements, the government concealed “this ginormous GHS142.7 million from Parliament as they deliberately failed to disclose this item as part of their expenditure returns of 2020 during the 2021 budget consideration in Parliament.”

This 2020 cathedral expenditure, the opposition MP noted, was also kept away from the Auditor-General in his 2020 audit.

In a separate Facebook post, the lawmaker said so far, adding this latest exposé to his previous leaks, the Akufo-Addo government has spent GHS199,832,603.00 of taxpayer funds on a cathedral which was originally presented to Ghanaians as a personal pledge to God that will not be executed with taxpayer funds.

Digging into the tonnes of documents, Mr Ablakwa stated that many more millions have been paid illegally which “we shall continue to put out to the glory of God and in the overall national interest. On a further scarier note, the figures we are currently reviewing do not look like anything near a seed capital.”

He said this GHS200 million cathedral gate has turned out to be the biggest presidential scandal in Ghana’s entire history.

He described as “terribly shocking”, how President Akufo-Addo and his men could engage in “such ungodly, illegal and insensitive conduct.”

In the name of a cathedral project, Mr Ablakwa again alleged that a corrupt slush fund has been created to siphon taxpayer funds from the suffering masses on the blind side of Parliament, the Auditor-General, CSOs and other accountability systems.

“Instructively, these illegal diversions took place when the government was engaged in massive vote-buying to win the 2020 elections; it was also the period COVID-19 had peaked and placed enormous pressure on our health delivery as many Ghanaians died, and yet President Akufo-Addo claimed he couldn’t find the resources to fulfill his Agenda 111 pledge of building new hospitals,” he stated.