"The question is, are we spending money from the state's coffers?" Is that too much to ask since it's being politicized? Do we truly want to put an end to it? "I'm going to ask you a question."
"As a minister of finance, we are looking at resources and how much we put in there at any point in time that is reasonable, and so far, we have spent less than one-thousandth of our budget on it," he added.
"I am quite confident in my ability to get income to support this, and, more significantly, if I dig into the economics of it, I actually see an overwhelming potential for this to pay off."
"Typically, I am looking at an internal rate of return," the president's cousin explained.
Mr. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, a Member of Parliament for North Tongu, claimed 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 planned national cathedral activities.
According to Mr. Ablakwa, the administration withheld "this colossal GHS142.7 million from Parliament as they purposefully neglected to report this item as part of their spending returns for 2020 during the 2021 budget debate in Parliament," in violation of legal obligations.
The Auditor-General was also kept in the dark about the cathedral spending in 2020, according to the opposition MP. According to the legislator, the Akufo-Addo government has spent GHS199,832,603.00 of public dollars on a cathedral that was first offered to Ghanaians as a personal vow to God that will not be accomplished with taxpayer monies, adding this fresh exposé to his prior disclosures.
Mr. Ablakwa added that many more millions had been paid unlawfully, which "we shall continue to put out to the glory of God and in the greater national benefit" after sifting through the reams of paperwork. Even frightening, the amounts we're looking at right now don't appear to be anything close to seed funding."
He said that the GHS200 million cathedral gate has turned out to be the country's largest presidential scandal. How President Akufo-Addo and his soldiers could indulge in "such sinful, unlawful, and callous behaviour" was stunning to him.
Mr. Ablakwa said that, under the name of a cathedral project, a corrupt slush fund was set up to steal public cash from the suffering masses while Parliament, the Auditor-General, civil society organizations, and other accountability institutions were ignored.
"Instructively, these illegal detours occurred during a period when the government was engaged in massive vote-buying to win the 2020 elections; it was also the period when COVID-19 peaked, putting 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.
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