A leading member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Kobina Arthur Kennedy, says the next president of Ghana, after Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, should abandon the National Cathedral project if he or she is wise.
According to him, the project is a waste of resources and it will not be prudent for anyone to “throw good money after bad money”.
The former NPP flagbearer aspirant was speaking on TV3‘s Ghana Tonight on Wednesday, October 18.
His comment comes after two members of the board of trustees – Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams and Reverend Eastwood Anaba – tendered in their resignation letter.
They had cited a lack of audit of the project since they made a request in January.
But the Secretariat, in a reply, had described as false the claims made by the venerable men of God.
“The attention of the Secretariat of the National Cathedral project has been drawn to a letter addressed to the President – sighted in the media before Board members received copies – of the resignation of two of the members of the Board, Archbishop Nicholas Duncan Williams and Rev Eastwood Anaba,” the reply in a statement dated Wednesday, October 18 began.
“The reason given in the letter for their resignation is said to be the lack of any information, whatsoever, following their January 23, 2023 resolution calling for an audit of the National Cathedral project, and a complete cessation of work on the project,” the statement signed by Executive Director Dr Paul Opoku-Mensah further noted.
It further clarified that international accounting and auditing firm Deloitte has been engaged to audit the project much to the prior knowledge of the two clergymen.
Speaking on the fallout, Dr Arthur Kennedy said the project was doomed from the get-go because President Akufo-Addo misled the Ghanaian public.
He said the current state of the project is an epitome of how reckless the government of the day has been in the management of resources entrusted to it and how little it has cared for the Ghanaian.
The US-based medical practitioner is, therefore, advising the next president to be elected on December 7, 2024 to simply abandon this project.
“If the person is wise, he would abandon it because this is sand cost. That’s what my economist friends tell me and we should not throw good money after bad money,” he told host Alfred Ocansey.
“This money has been wasted and the more money we put in this, the more wastage we will get.”
He said if he had $400 million, which is estimated to have been invested in the project so far, “I will have to use that money to improve tourism infrastructure like build major hotels in the Cape Coast area, improve the Cape Coast-Accra road, rehabilitate places like Asebu Kwamankese where Asebu Amanfi and others have relics”.
He insists that no tourist worth his salt will by-pass all the major cathedrals in Europe and come down to sub-Saharan Africa to visit a Bible museum.
For him, the project needs strict auditing as he suspects the hard-earned money of Ghanaians has been “looted and misappropriated”.