Vice President of IMANI Africa, Bright Simons has raised issues about the absence of a project management professional on the governing board of the National Cathedral Project.
The board was mainly made up of senior clergymen but Bright Simons said that a project management professional should have been there to provide real professional advice.
“So they start at 100 million Dollars and they are now at 400 million Dollars. Some of those conversations around the exercise of professional judgements, I have nothing against the great men in cassock, they are very important but you can’t build such a massive project and on the governing board there is no single project management professional.
“There was not a single project management professional in that room.”
The National Cathedral project was a pledge President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo made to his God when he was campaigning ahead of the 2016 presidential elections. He prayed that he was going build the cathedral to honour God if the almighty helped him to win the elections that year, an election he won.
However, the project has been fraught with allegations of financial impropriety.
North Tongu lawmaker Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa had been making a series of corruption allegations with regard to the stalled project.
In one of his episodes on the project, the opposition lawmaker said Articles of Incorporation he secured from the District of Columbia Government’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (corporation’s division) confirmed that a nonprofit corporation was registered as the “National Cathedral of Ghana and Bible Museum Foundation, Inc.”
“This National Cathedral of Ghana and Bible Museum Foundation, Inc. received its Certificate of Incorporation with its effective date being May 3, 2021 and signed by Josef G. Gasimov, Superintendent of Corporations, Corporations Division.
“It is worthy of note that the name National Cathedral of Ghana and Museum Foundation, Inc. is unmistakably different from what was incorporated in Ghana some two years prior, specifically on the 18th of July, 2019 as the National Cathedral of Ghana.
“Curiously, we have also discovered that none of the prominent Ministers of the Gospel who serve as Trustees of the National Cathedral of Ghana feature in the articles of incorporation and list of governors as submitted to US authorities,” he said in a statement…
Below is the list of the 13-member Board of Trustees of the National Cathedral at the time the project started…
- Apostle Prof. Opoku Onyinah – Chairman of the Church of Pentecost – Chairperson
- Archbishop Charles Palmer-Buckle Metropolitan Catholic Archbishop, Cape Coast – Vice Chairman
- Most Rev. Bishop Justice Ofei Akrofi – Anglican Archbishop Emeritus – Member
- Rt. Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Martey former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church – Member
- Most Rev T. K. Awotwi Pratt – Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church – Member
- Rev Prof Cephas Omenyo – Moderator of the Presbyterian Church – Member
- Pastor Mensa Otabil – General Overseer of International Central Gospel Church – Member
- Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams – Presiding Archbishop and General Overseer of Action Chapel International -Member
- Rev Dr. Joyce Aryee – Executive Director, Salt and Light Ministries – Member
- Bishop Dag Heward-Mills – Presiding Bishop, Lighthouse Group of Churches -Member
- Rev Eastwood Anaba – Founder and President of Eastwood Anaba Ministries – Member
- Rev Victor Kusi-Boateng – Founder of Power Chapel Worldwide – Member/Secretary
- Rev Dr. Frimpong Manso – General Superintendent, Assemblies of God – Member
