On National Cathedral To-Do, Ace Ankomah’s Best Shot Is Law and Precedent

I read the news report regarding what the renowned Ghanaian lawyer, Mr. Ace Ankomah, had to say in response to those citizens who are decrying the proposed construction of the National Cathedral in the heart of the country’s capital city of Accra and could not have felt more disappointed in this otherwise fine legal light and mind (See “National Cathedral: Some Ghanaians Behaving Like ‘Cursed Lepers’ – Ace Ankomah” Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 8/31/18). You see, the argument of those in favor of the establishment or construction of a multipurpose National Cathedral must be squared based on logic and historical precedent as well as the law, not on raw emotions or the fact that most education and healthcare establishments in the country were charitably built and ran by the sacrificial leadership of Christian churches in the country.

The fact of the matter, and I have already discussed this in a previously published column, is that there already exists a National Mosque in the country that was fiscally sponsored with the Ghanaian taxpayer’s money by the erstwhile Rawlings-headed regime of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), in egregious collaboration with the extant Government of Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country, as I am reliably informed. This must have been in the 1990s. I call such collaboration “egregious” as well as “flagitious” because the Fourth-Republican Constitution of Ghana specifically prohibits the direct involvement of the Government, generically speaking, in religious affairs. This is what has been abbreviatively labeled as the “Separation of Church and State.” The legal and ideological concept of “Church,” in the latter instance, clearly refers to all religious establishments, including, you guessed right, Islam.

Well, the crux of the logic here falls under the democratic concept of equal treatment before the law. To the preceding may also be added something called “Equality of Opportunities” or “Equal Opportunities,” for short. The indisputable logic of equality simply states that if, indeed, there exists a National Mosque in the country whose construction was financially supported by any elected sitting government in the country, then per the legal logic and the constitutional stipulation of “Equality Before The Law,” or “The Law of Equal Opportunities,” the government has a bounden obligation to also financially support the establishment or construction of National Cathedral. This is all the more legally and politically sound because, after all, the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens – approximately 75-percent – profess Christianity as their highest article of Faith or religious persuasion. The 17- or 18-percent of Ghanaian citizens who profess the Muslim/Islamic Faith cannot be envisaged to be endowed to superior rights over the country’s Christian-majority populace.

I have already discussed the concept and subject of “Eminent Domain,” or legal principle in a previous column and so do not intend to labor over the same here, except to tangentially observe the fact that the “Principle of Eminent Domain” falls under the philosophical principle or theory of “Utilitarianism,” which simply states that any project undertaken for the greater good of the Ghanaian citizenry, in our specific or particular context, supersedes the right of the generic individual in society. In our specific case, it is the construction or existence of residential bungalows earmarked for the official use of Appeals Court Judges within the same land space proposed for the construction of the National Cathedral. The logic of the law goes as follows: If the construction of the National Cathedral promises to serve the needs of a greater number of people or population than is currently the case with the bungalows and other publicly owned buildings occupying the same land space proposed for the construction of the National Cathedral, then in simple motor-traffic language, the proposed National Cathedral literally has “the right of way” or superior claim to the land at issue or in dispute. End of argument; case closed.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
August 31, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]