President John Dramani Mahama has ruled out the use of taxpayers’ money to finance Ghana’s National Cathedral, saying the country’s Christian community should raise the funds needed to complete the stalled project.
Mahama said Christians in Ghana and abroad had the capacity to mobilize the ret $90) from each Christian could provide enough money to construct the cathedral
“If we all pay 1,000 cedis each, we should be able to construct a National Cathedral,” Mahama said during a town hall meeting in Wa on Sept. 12 as part of his tour of the Upper West Region.
The president stressed that his position should not be interpreted as opposition to the idea of a National Cathedral. Instead, he identified three concerns with the project as it was conceived and implemented under the previous administration, namely its financing, its location and the demolition of properties to make way for the proposed facility.
“I am not against the National Cathedral, and we should clarify that,” Mahama said.
He said his concern was that taxpayers’ money should not be used to finance a project that he described as a personal pledge made by former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
Mahama said the National Cathedral was not a national policy inherited by his administration and therefore did not carry the same obligation as government policies and projects that had been formally adopted by the state.
“The only one is the National Cathedral, but that was not a national policy. It was a personal pledge by the former president. It was a personal pledge by the former president to God. So that one, it wasn’t national policy,” Mahama said.
His comments come as the Christian Council of Ghana begins work on a possible new path for the project.
The Council has established a technical committee made up of representatives from various Christian groupings with a one month time line to examine the practical questions surrounding the cathedral.
The committee is expected to develop a workable funding model and make recommendations on the location of the project, as well as other outstanding issues.
Rev. Enoch Nii Narh Thompson, chairman of the Christian Council, said the committee’s recommendations would first be submitted to Mahama Ayariga, the minister for Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, before being forwarded to Mahama for consideration.
The Council’s initiative now takes place against a clear position from the president that public financing is not an option.
Mahama also questioned the original location of the cathedral in central Accra. He said the area already contains major public facilities, including Parliament, the Accra International Conference Centre, the Greater Accra Regional Hospital and the National Theatre.
He argued that placing another major facility in the area would further constrain the space.
“So, if you go and put this major thing there again, it will constrict that whole area. You even have the National Theatre just close by,” Mahama said.
He also raised concerns about the properties that were demolished to clear the site.
Mahama said 10 judges’ residences, the residence of the Malian ambassador and the old Passport Office were among properties demolished in preparation for the project. He said some of those properties had still not been replaced.
The questions of location and financing had already emerged in discussions between the government and Christian leaders earlier this month.
On Sept. 2, Ayariga told the Christian Council that Mahama and the governing National Democratic Congress did not oppose Ghana having a National Cathedral but wanted consensus on its location and how it should be funded.
Ayariga called on the different Christian denominations to meet and agree on a common position before the matter was taken to the president.
The Christian Council’s decision to establish the technical committee followed those discussions and gave the various Christian groups a formal mechanism to consider the questions raised by the government.
The financial history of the project is a major part of the discussion. The National Cathedral was announced by Akufo-Addo in 2018. The project was presented as a national religious landmark and was designed by British-Ghanaian architect Sir David Adjaye.
Plans included a 5,000-seat auditorium, chapels, a baptistery, a music school, an art gallery and a Bible museum and documentation centre. The proposed development was to be built on a large site in central Accra.
The project became increasingly controversial over the money committed to it and the manner in which it was administered.
A Deloitte and Touche audit covering the operations of the National Cathedral Secretariat from 2021 to 2023 found financial irregularities, procurement breaches and what the government described as a general lack of due process.
Following the audit, Mahama’s administration dissolved the National Cathedral Secretariat in 2025 and began steps to dissolve its Board of Trustees. The president also ordered a comprehensive forensic audit of the project and the Secretariat.
The initial government assessment also put the financial exposure higher than the figure that had commonly been cited.
In July 2025, government communications minister Felix Kwakye Ofosu said that although about $58 million had been widely reported as the amount paid and committed to the project, a further $39 million was outstanding to the contractor. That brought the total cost incurred at the site to about $97 million, according to the government.
The government said the Deloitte audit did not cover the full scope of the project’s operations, prompting the forensic investigation. That forensic audit has now been completed.
In August, Kwakye Ofosu said the report had been submitted to the Attorney-General, Dominic Ayine, for review. He said the forensic audit was intended to establish who was responsible for the irregularities identified in the earlier audit and determine whether the transactions were lawful.
The Attorney-General has separately confirmed that the Auditor-General engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers to undertake the forensic audit.
Mahama said in Wa that the forensic report is now with the Attorney-General and that he would make a copy available to the Christian Council.
He said the Christian leaders should be able to examine how the money spent on the project was used and determine whether corrective action was necessary. The disclosure is significant for the Christian Council’s technical committee because the group’s recommendations will now be developed alongside the findings of the forensic investigation.
The Council had previously called for the audit findings to be made available to Christian leaders, saying the information was necessary for them to make informed contributions to the discussion about the project’s future.
