The Executive Director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh, has called on the government to suspend the controversial National Cathedral project due to the current economic hardship of Ghanaians.
According to the democratic and good governance organisation, the government must first and foremost consider the plight of Ghanaians before embarking on any initiative like the National Cathedral, which the CCD-Ghana sees as “vanity”.
In a roundtable discussion hosted by Citizen’s Coalition on Thursday, December 15, Professor Prempeh said it does not make sense for the government to build a National Cathedral amid the challenges faced by Ghanaians.
Adding to that discussion, he opined that the site designated for the National Cathedral could be used for another project that would benefit the state rather than building a cathedral to serve as a tourist site.
“This is not the time for vanity projects, but we have preserved a vanity project in the form of the cathedral. I was expecting that this being a crisis period, we will reflect on that decision and say, ‘even if this is sensible to do at all’, and I do not think so, that ‘it will not be the appropriate period or we will change the idea to something else’. There is a lot that we can still do with that site which can make sense,” he said.
Speaking on the 2023 National Budget laid before Parliament on November 24, 2022, Prof. Prempeh expressed his disappointment in the government for focusing more on the nation accessing loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) than finding alternatives by which the fortunes of the country could be transformed.
Moreover, he advised the government to cut down expenditures by cutting down the size of appointees to a reasonable number that would be beneficial to the state.
“When you are in crisis, you can do exceptional things. I don’t see anything in the budget to suggest that this is a crisis and that this is being done as an emergency measure”.
“So generally, it is a missed opportunity in terms of seeing this as a crisis moment and seeing it as a moment to reset the button. I think we have not quite done that.
“It looks to me that it is purely an emergency thing targeted at the IMF to approve a loan as opposed to something that is going deep into the structure and our governance”, he noted at the roundtable discussion.