The decision by President John Dramani Mahama to complete the Akufo-Addo-initiated stalled National Cathedral Project is one that defuses the boiling-point toxicity of a volatile political climate and a national-development regressing level of inordinate partisanship that has stalled Ghana’s salutary and steady progression on the Global Development Ladder (GDL) since Independence. Which is why rather than maliciously and obtusely pooh-poohing this momentous decision by the usual suspects of an Echo-Chamber fixated ivory tower rats, such progressive decision ought to be strongly encouraged and even heartily and resonantly celebrated.
Finally, a hitherto immutable and incorrigibly divisive and pathologically narcissistic and highly controversial slash-and-burn politician seems to be fast maturing into the kind of nationally centered statesman that has been sorely lacking and been direly needed ever since anybody belonging to the same generation as Yours Truly and even older can remember (See “Mahama Hints at Completing National Cathedral, But…” OnuaOnline.com 1/12/25).
As the twice, nonconsecutively, elected Bole-Bamboi native from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region recently observed, there are several budget-related issues that need to be ironed out before work on the long-stalled National Cathedral Project can resume and be brought to the requisite glorious conclusion, including the reconsideration of the present location of the project. We also unreservedly concur with Mr. Mahama that the pall of scandalous dealings surrounding what has widely come to be known as the $58 Million (USD) Question, must be promptly investigated and any fiscal miscreants promptly brought to justiciable accountability, including the imperative demand for restitution of any funds that cannot be creditably and/or responsibly accounted for.
The caveat here, though, is that this fiscally and morally healthy attempt to call any key players or principal participants of the project to account must not be envisaged to be prejudicial or vindictively aligned in the flagrantly pedestrian manner of a political witch-hunt. Else, we may all soon find ourselves going down the sort of Domino Effect tit-for-tat road that may be counterproductive and with absolutely no end in sight, thereby rendering the entire morally cathartic and legally sanitary process of accountability a patently superfluous and a veritable exercise in futility.
Now, what the foregoing essentially means is that Ghanaian citizens and taxpayers have an inalienable constitutional right to know precisely how it came about that a project that was initially supposed to be executed with the solicitation of private funds, suddenly devolved into a national budgetary burden and a veritable nightmare. For instance, precisely how did the very idea come about that the neatly and the clearly delineated boundary between private and public funding sources needed to be rudely and flagrantly flouted or crossed without any recourse to Parliament for approval, and for what purpose or reason?
You see, responsible and accountable leadership means that our leaders cannot play fast-and-loose with the Rousseauian Theory of the Social Contract. Based on the multiplicity of scandalously tolerated levels of official corruption permitted to obstreperously fester under the watch of the previous Akufo-Addo Government, we think that we pretty much have a very good sense of who the kleptocratic principal violators of the aforesaid Social Contract may be. But we, of course, prefer not to unduly speculate here.
Instead, it is far more preferable to forensically establish the fact of who these criminal nation-wrecking suspects are, and then the law will be allowed to take its most logical and natural course to the fullest extent. The construction of the National Cathedral, as initially and originally articulated by former President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, was for purposes more “ecumenical” in scope than rigidly or “dogmatically theocentric” or “Christocentric” in the manner that some inveterate Akufo-Addo detractors and some cynical political propagandists would have the rest of the nation and the Global Ghanaian Community (GGC) believe.
As noted umpteen times in the past and the recent past, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a multipurpose or a multiuse ecumenical center or venue in the country where the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens and taxpayers who identify themselves as Christians can gather on occasion to share and celebrate the values of their faith in a country that is predominantly informed by Judeo-Christian ethos, with, of course, a significant infusion of the Islamic faith in its assortment and diverse shades and degrees of theology as well.
It is also rather ironic that in a country with only approximately 17-percent of its population identifying themselves as Muslim, there exists a National Mosque, whereas for the approximately 72-percent of the population that self-identify as Christians find the construction of a National Cathedral being pooh-poohed as an anathema or a taboo. What kind of humans could Ghanaian Christians possibly be? Wallahi!
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
January 14, 2025
E-mail: [email protected]
Comments
Kwame, my name sake, You should be very ashamed of yourself by praising Mahama for his decision to start or I should say continue (although only a pickax was used to start the Cathedral). You forgot to mention all the projects Akufo Addo refused to continue after mistakenly elected to manage our nation's economy. That MONKEY was the worst thing that ever happened to Ghana. A president who awarded his daughter $34 million spare parts contract to service 275 ambulances when she has no ma...