Ask for forgiveness for your government's utterly sinful national cathedral scandal – Ablakwa to Akufo-Addo

The Member of Parliament (MP) for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has insisted that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo needs to ask for forgiveness over his government’s bad decision to construct the National Cathedral at the time Ghanaians are suffering under unbearable economic hardship.

The Minority MP in the last few months has accused the government of allocating over GHS200 million to fund the project without parliamentary approval.

Addressing some Catholic Bishops at the 19th plenary assembly of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, at Christ the King Church, in Accra, on Tuesday, 26 July 2022, President Akufo-Addo reacted to the brouhaha that has marred the project he personally pledged to God.

He said, there will never be an appropriate time to build a national cathedral.

“My personal view has always been that, even though the Cathedral will be very much a national institution, the cost should be largely borne by the Christian community, with the state providing the land and initial funding to get the project off the ground.

“Looking through the history of all the great cathedrals of the world, there has never been, what can be called, ‘an appropriate time’ to build a cathedral,” President Akufo-Addo said.

Reacting to the President's comments, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa says H.E Akufo-Addo deliberately failed to address the real and germane concerns of the Ghanaian people.

According to him, the President’s speech was obfuscating and offensive.

He notes in a Facebook post that the President should have rather used the platform to ask for forgiveness for the utterly sinful cathedral scandal.

“As Christians, we expect that at the very least, after President Akufo-Addo and his government have been so badly exposed in this utterly sinful cathedral scandal, that the President would have afforded the rare opportunity of coming before the revered clergy of the Episcopal Conference of Africa and Madagascar yesterday to be contrite and ask the men of God to help him pray for forgiveness, even as he uses the occasion to apologize to the clergy he misled and the Ghanaian people he terribly deceived,” part of the post by the MP reads.