$200m 450-chamber 'not that expensive' – Adei

The Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), Professor Stephen Adei, has said the estimated $200 million cost of the botched 450-seat parliamentary chamber is not expensive.

Nonetheless, he said the timing for the proposed project was bad and not a priority for the nation.

“I think that that cost of the building, and I’m saying as someone who has been building, it is not that expensive but it is wrong at this time in terms of national priorities and the needs of this nation”, he told Benjamin Akakpo on Class91.3FM’s Executive Breakfast Show on Wednesday, 17 July 2019.

“To say we’ve given you this place to meet and you’re going to spend about a quarter of a billion dollars when we cannot do roads, it shows a sense of insensitivity and I think the reaction of the media, even the rude one, is a good message to our politicians that Ghanaians will not tolerate them…” the former Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) Rector said.

According to him, “In leadership, you should be a model in how you behave; they got it wrong and their fingers have been burnt badly. For me, I never talked about it because I was expecting this backlash and if journalists and the bad boys are going to do this backlash, we’ll just watch it and see because the politicians must learn through the hard way and I think they’ve withdrawn it and must be withdrawn for decades because when they bring it back, they will see what the people will do to them”.

The 450-seat chamber idea received stern opposition from ordinary Ghanaians, the media, Civil Society Organisations and even some lawmakers. The move has since been shelved.