Member of Parliament for Builsa South, Dr Clement Apaak ,has said the ongoing cathedral project should be named Akufo-Addo Cathedral, not National Cathedral.
He explained that the project is a personal pledge that was made by President Akufo-Addo to his maker therefore, it cannot be described as a national project.
Dr. Apaak who is a member of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament further argued that such national projects or initiatives must be captured in the national budget presented to Parliament but he says this particular project has not come to Parliament.
“I still don’t understand why it is described as a National Cathedral; because it is not. This is Akufo-Addo’s Cathedral. A project or an initiative becomes national when it is the people’s demand and desire, or when it is presented to the people during an electioneering campaign and contained in a manifesto, then it is given power by the people,” he told Alfred Ocansey on the Sunrise show on3FM Monday June 6.
“It has not come to parliament, it is not in the budget and parliament has not approved any funding for such a project. The National Cathedral was never to us in the budget as an item with financial allocations made to it for an approval. We passed the Appropriation Bill and there is instance that we have allocated money for the National Cathedral” he stressed.
Clement Apaak described the alleged allocation of Twenty-five million dollars ($25,000,000) seed money for the building of the National Cathedral as an extreme form of lawlessness because they are not clothed with the powers to expend public resources when they have not been allocated and approved by the people who represent Ghanaians.
“This is the extreme form of lawlessness where the constitution has been thrown to the dogs, when money that must be applied to more pressing issues are being pushed towards fulfilling a personal pledge and it is unacceptable” the MP insisted adding that the President has engaged in an illegality as far as the National Cathedral and the monies allocated to it is concern.
