A RM1.7bil ‘holy hole'

The Star

06-06-2025

THE walls surrounding Ghana's national cathedral are ageing plywood. Its spires are yellow construction cranes, which have not moved in years.
It frequently reverberates with singing – the singing of a choir of frogs that moves in whenever the cathedral's half-finished foundations fill with rainwater.
Ghana's former president, Nana Akufo-Addo, spent around US$58mil (RM248mil) in public money on the US$400mil (RM1.7bil) cathedral project – a huge sum in this debt-saddled West African country.
The new finance minister said in March that Ghana's economy was in 'severe distress'.
The cathedral was designed by celebrity architect David Adjaye. But beyond the blueprints, there is very little to show for the money.
'They have only dug a hole – a big hole,' said Praise Chinedu, a student and a Pentecostal Christian.
A well-thumbed Bible tucked under his arm, he was emerging from a morning service at Pure Fire Miracles Ministries onto a street humming with churchgoers, ice cream vendors and clamouring children.
His brother John, who had been buying anointing oil, sidled up. 'God is not going to be happy,' he said.
Across Accra, Ghana's coastal capital, citizens joke that the hole is the biggest and most expensive in the world.
Ghana's former president Akufo-Addo. — Francis Kokoroko/The New York Times
A valuable stretch of land surrounded by museums, bank headquarters and some of Ghana's ritziest hotels was cleared of government buildings for the church.
That land is now thick with vegetation and bird life, unvisited except by scrap metal thieves and, occasionally in the rainy season, swimmers staging stunts for social media.
The unbuilt cathedral became a symbol of economic mismanagement and a political battleground after Akufo-Addo said its construction was to fulfil a personal pledge he had made to God.
Now that Akufo-Addo has left office, the project appears permanently doomed.
The cathedral is now a major target of the new government's anti-corruption initiative, called Operation Recover All Loot.
Last month, the government announced that it would no longer fund the project and dissolved the agency responsible for managing it.
Africa is home to the world's largest Christian population. Ghana, where faith is especially important to young people, has seen a recent boom in church building.
But the national cathedral project never attracted the support Akufo-Addo anticipated.
Instead, construction stalled at its foundations as Ghana suffered its worst economic crisis in a generation.
To many Ghanaians lately, a cathedral has seemed like the last thing the country needs, especially one with an estimated cost of US$400mil.
The project began with much fanfare.
In 2019, at a fundraising dinner in Washington, a smiling Akufo-Addo cut into a large grey, square confection – the planned cathedral rendered in cake.
With a 5,000-seat auditorium and a concave roof referencing the curve of Asante royal stools, it was intended to be much more than just a cathedral.
It was to be a national monument, similar to the Washington National Cathedral or London's Westminster Abbey, a place where solemn ceremonies of state – like presidents' funerals and royal weddings – would take place.
Akufo-Addo, who was born into a Presbyterian family but became an Anglican as a young man, told the group gathered in Washington that the interdenominational cathedral would be a unifier for Ghanaian Christians, who represent more than 70% of the population.
It would also be an offering of thanks to God for sparing the country from the epidemics, civil wars and famines that had plagued its neighbours, he said.
But then he revealed a third reason for its construction.
'I made a pledge to God that if I become the president – after two unsuccessful attempts – in the 2016 presidential elections, I will build a cathedral to the glory of God,' he said, according to official readouts of the event.
The statement turned out to be a gift to Akufo-Addo's opponents, who argued that the president should not be allowed to use public money as part of a personal bargain he made with God – let alone US$58mil of it.
Paul Opoku-Mensah, the executive director of the agency overseeing the project, said demonising the cathedral quickly became 'a political strategy'.
In March 2024, one member of parliament, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, led a march to the construction site, cutting a red ribbon at its gate to poke fun at the president for commissioning what was still a giant hole.
'We are demanding that the contracts must be immediately terminated to avoid further financial loss to the state,' he said.
If using the cathedral to target the president was a political strategy, it worked.
John Mahama, a former president who promised to create jobs and fix the economy, pulled off a dramatic comeback in December's election. He made Okudzeto Ablakwa his foreign minister.
Corruption accusations often take centre stage in Ghanaian elections, and the large sums involved in the national cathedral project convinced many Ghanaians that officials had been skimming off the top.
A public ombudsman said procurement rules had been breached and recommended a forensic audit.
But in an interview by the big hole in early April, Opoku-Mensah said he had nothing to hide and had handed over all the accounts to the investigators.
He explained that the cathedral was not really intended as a church, but as a major monument that had needed state money to get started but would eventually become a profit-making magnet for visitors.
'It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the vision,' he said.
Akufo-Addo also seemed befuddled about the controversy.
'I find it difficult to see what is so problematic about it,' he said in an interview in April in his book-lined home office surrounded by a lush garden.
He mused aloud about whether people believed it 'would be too big a tribute to my leadership'.
Now that the country's leaders have changed, few Ghanaians admit to supporting the cathedral.
Those who do say Akufo-Addo and others should foot the bill – but not taxpayers.
'It should be funded through donations,' said Esi Darko, an architect, as she left church one recent afternoon in an Accra neighbourhood known as Christian Village.
'It shouldn't be imposed upon everyone because not all are Christians.'
There are also around five million Muslims in Ghana, a country of more than 35 million people, and, lately, a growing number of atheists.
'Don't believe in God?' reads a billboard in central Accra. 'You are not alone.' — ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times