‘Let us fear God’ – Ablakwa tells Ofori-Atta after GTV interview

Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, North Tongu MP, has stated that Ken Ofori-Atta, the Finance Minister’s interview on GTV’s Talking Point on Sunday, June 12, was “an unmitigated disaster”.

According to him, the Minister, who was speaking about the recent controversies surrounding the 5000-seater National Cathedral, failed to justify why the government is funding the project with taxpayers’ money instead of the private sector funding as was stated before the commencement of the project.

The Ranking Member on the Foreign Affairs Committee in Parliament took to his Facebook after the Finance Minister’s interview and indicated that “he [Ofori-Atta] failed to provide any justification for the egregious constitutional breaches, particularly the cardinal affront of disbursing public funds without Parliamentary approval.”

To him, the Minister was unable to debunk the allegations levelled against the government in terms of funding the project with the taxpayers’ money as well as the actual cost of the entire project.

“[Ken Ofori-Atta] 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,” Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa wrote.

“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).

“He 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.

“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.”

“Let us fear God,” Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa advised.

What Ken Ofori-Atta said about the funding of the project.

Ken Ofori-Atta, while speaking on GTV’s Talking Point programme stated that, poverty should not drive Ghana to shun its religiosity – to build a monument that has huge investment potential.

“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. Is the executive mindful of the current situation?” he quizzed.

“We shouldn’t snuff out our religiousness or spirituality because we are poor. The Lord will understand if we put our widows-mite in there,” Ken Ofori-Atta stated.

To him, the cathedral is not costing the nation as much as has been speculated in the media.

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

“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,” he observed.

Ken Ofori-Atta stressed, “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.”