Don't rob the poor to fund establishment of National Cathedral - Prof Gyimah-Boadi

The Executive Director of the Afrobarometer Network, Professor Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, has urged government to explain terms under which the proposed National Cathedral is to be constructed.

According to Professor Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, if the construction of the cathedral will be constructed with public funds, then the Christian community – whom the Cathedral will be dedicated to – is robbing the poor.

He explains that allocation of resources to the poor will dwindle next year compared to this year because scarce resources would have been deployed into the construction of the cathedral.

He said “the national cathedral is a complex one and I don’t know the terms but We need to clear about the terms and we need to know a lot about the terms upon which the cathedra is been constructed for the Christian community and its leadership. If they (government) is paying the full cost of it, paying for the land or paying for replacement of the houses, livelihood that would be disrupted and so on, if they are paying for that and all that the state is doing is facilitating their payment maybe helping them to get state of the art architectural designer that is fine, if any of these is coming from public funds then I’m afraid that the Christians and their leaders are simply robbing the poor because surely when it comes to the allocation of resources the poor would get fewer resources next year than they got this year and it would be partly because some of the scare resources have been deplored into the construction of a cathedral.”

“If that is the case it’s only then that I would conclude that the clergy has captured the state” he added

Government announced that several building structures including nine bungalows occupied by Appeal court judges would be demolished for the commencement of a 5000 seater capacity state-of-the-art cathedral which will include a Bible museum and a Documentation center.

This step by the government has received a lot of backlash and debate by both the opposition party and the general public as they questioned the relevance of the project; while others have described the motive as misguided priority.