North Tongu MP, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has described the Finance Minister’s response on government’s decision to fund part of the construction of the national cathedral with tax money as an “unmitigated disaster”.

Mr Ken Ofori-Atta in an interview on state-owned GTV on Sunday, 12 June 2022, wondered if using state funds to build the national cathedral that President Nana Akufo-Addo promised to put up for God, if he won the presidency, was too much.

“At any point in time when these buildings were built in Europe, was it ever the right time? How do we fund it will become the question?” he asked.

“Is the executive mindful of the current situation? We shouldn’t snuff out our religiousness or spirituality because we are poor”, he noted. 

“The Lord will understand if we put our widow’s mite in there”, Mr Ofori-Atta noted. 

“That question being asked is that: Are we spending money from state coffers? Is that too much to do because we are politicising it? Do we really want to stop it? That is going to be my question.” 

He said: “As a minister of finance, we are looking at resources and how much we put in there at every point in time that is sensible and, so, as we speak, we have spent less than one-thousandth of our expenditure on that.” 

“I am very confident of raising revenue to be able to fund this and then, more importantly, if I want to look into the economics of it, I truly see an overwhelming capacity that this will pay off. 

“Typically, I am looking at an internal rate of return, so, we should put this in mind”, the president’s cousin noted. 

Reacting to Mr Ofori-Atta’s explanations, Mr Ablakwa in a Facebook said, the finance minister failed to provide any justification for the egregious constitutional breaches, particularly the cardinal affront of disbursing public funds without Parliamentary approval.

He further said the Minister, was unable to inform Ghanaians about the total cost of President Akufo-Addo’s cathedral project.

“He couldn’t assist Ghanaians with answers on exactly how much is the contribution of the taxpayer and the specific amount he has unconstitutionally released so far, he was unable to provide contrary evidence to the many legal infractions we have accused government of, which include violating our procurement laws and illegally siphoning over GHS32million to Sir David Adjaye contrary to the Architects Act - 1969 (NLCD 357)” Mr Ablakwa stated.

The lawmaker continued that Mr Ofori-Atta further “wasn’t, unsurprisingly, able to refute our incontrovertible fact that despite the colossal unconstitutional releases, the contractors have abandoned the project due to lack of payments, raising major concerns about the true destination of millions of taxpayer funds.”

Mr Ablakwa noted that as Christ demonstrated in that Jerusalem Temple when he took the whip for the first and only time, He does not tolerate the corruption and desecration of His Temple — for it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”