$58.1m National Cathedral pit could provide 1m desks – EduWatch

Africa Education Watch after the government was unable to commission the National Cathedral on March 6th, 2024 has said the $58.1 million spent on the project could have been used to provide 1 million desks for all basic schools.

“The $58.1 million public funds into the Catherdal pit could have provided 1 million desks for all basic school pupils without desks and re-built about 600 primary schools under trees,” Director of EduWatch, Kofi Asare said in a post.

The education think tank’s concerns come after the former Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta in July 2021, announced that the government will commission the ongoing National Cathedral project on Wednesday, March 6, 2024.

He said the date on which Ghana marks its 67th Independence Day will be used to commission the interdenominational sacred space for the nation. However, work on the Cathedral has barely progressed since then.

Ken speaking at the Ghana Tourism Investment Summit explained that the cathedral could easily become a pilgrimage destination for millions of Christians across Africa, attracting visitors who could spend an average of $3,000 each.

“As we look at something like the Cathedral that has economic benefits beyond what we see…In Africa, we have some 600 million people who are Christians so imagine Ghana as the new Jerusalem and these 600 million people floating through with $3,000 to spend, it is a very different reality,” he said at the 2023 Tourism Investment Summit.

Meanwhile, some Members of Parliament of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), on March 6, 2024, went to the premises of the National Cathedral to commission the unfinished projection in honour of the project deadline.

Addressing the press, the Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Okudzeto Ablakwa and his colleagues asked the government to account for the project after failing to complete the cathedral as the then Finance Minister promised in 2021.

Describing the project as the most expensive pit in the world, he said “We are demanding full accountability of what happened to our $58,141,509.52. We also want to know why the contractors abandoned this project for lack of payment two years ago.”

He added, “We are demanding a comprehensive report on how much it has cost the state to replace and compensate some owners of demolished properties and how much is still outstanding, considering that aggrieved demolished property owners such as Waterstone Realty have resorted to the court.”

The critic of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Akufo-Addo government National Cathedral also called for the immediate termination of the contract saying that the longer the project remains suspended the greater the cost to the taxpayer.

“We have to pay, there is a cost to this abandonment. We have to pay for the extension of time, we have to pay for standing time, and we also have to pay for abortive and real work costs due to the main contractor suspension,” he said.

We also demand that the National Cathedral Secretariat should be immediately closed. So far this secretariat has received a staggering GHS225,962,500 it is a very expensive secretariat,” the NDC lawmakers have demanded.