To build or not to build?

I had been one of those who were advocating for prioritizing our focus as a country, for government not to meddle in the affairs of religion at least not at a critical time as this, that government rather than focusing on facilitating, building or providing land (whichever you are inclined to believe) should rather focus on providing basic needs of its people; reducing the population to hospital ratio, providing enough schools so our kids are not phased with a knee-jerk double track system, working on a robust pensions system so people above 60 years would not try to cheat the system and go home and retire on a good social security, focus on providing jobs for the unemployed or loans for the young entrepreneurs, focus on sound regulatory regimes for land acquisition, tenancy, and banking in all focus on more important things that would give hope to the young graduates to stay and make their nation great and forget norm of traveling to advanced countries for greener pastures.

It was surprising to hear a section of the populace who came up from the religious divide. And as though someone were the antichrist they started peddling religiously sensitive comments. It was sad to know that some people in Ghana are blinded by religion and are outrightly handicapped by its ramifications. A tool the politicians always use to muddy the waters of serious talk and deep thinking. I remember when a very prominent man in this country had been alleged to have been in the midst of the collapse of a bank, again religion had gotten hold of the matter as though religion is a license for people to walk away from a crime scene.

The religion (Christianity) I grew up knowing was of honesty, service and downright virtues of truth and accountability. Was I lost to the right teachings, does Christianity teach us to be cowards when our own has wronged the flock, is Christianity an excuse to be gullible? Is Christianity a license to kill and go Scott free? Are some people above the law because they read the Bible better than others or they hear expressly from God?

Interestingly some of the yay sayers for the Cathedral have touted the nay sayers as demonic and stupid, was I surprised no, because this is Ghana one of the top 10 most religious countries in the world, it shouldn’t be strange. It is strange though that so called well educated folk in this country have suddenly been religiously gagged politically bias, and morally myopic needless. It is now very difficult to have clear, forward thinking discussions/debates, for mutual benefit beyond the religious and political lens, a trend i fear is crippling the moral fabric of our society, we seem to be more religious than the countries we look up to like the United States, China, United Kingdom, Germany etc our elite folk throng their streets for casual strolls, our politicians flock their medical institutions for quality healthcare, untouchable clergymen have their kids studying in their schools, yet we don’t think we deserve these things here in our country, we assume building a cathedral precedes building hospitals and schools. How can we speak about things that affect the regular Ghanaian without being branded as speaking against the church, many a time the hypocrites on these media platforms are only face masking.

It is strange though that so called well educated folk in this country have suddenly been religiously gagged politically bias, and morally myopic needless.

If we could mobilize the churches to build a cathedral. I have heard the lame excuse that the church would bear the cost of building the cathedral at no cost to the state, a statement i find very unfortunate; our passport office would be demolished along with 9 residences of judges and other state buildings, are the churches going to build new bungalows for these judges, would they build us a new passport office? how are they raising the funds for this million dollar project? who will run this cathedral when it is finished? what are the plans to monetize it? there are a million questions to answer about the building of this cathedral yet many people are not asking and are only excited and blinded by religion to make very ignorant comments.

Some people have also made the excuse that this Cathedral would draw a lot of tourism into our dear country, well can we kill two birds with one stone? can we start with something that would one heal our people wile serving the tourism purpose at the same time?

A study published by VISA and Oxford Economics touts medical tourism as a burgeoning industry with a value over $439 billion USD. With 3-4% of the world’s population traveling across borders to get healthcare, it is estimated that this industry is growing by 25% per year. Patients Beyond Borders, considered to be the most trusted international source for consumer information concerning medical and health travel, estimated 1.3 million Americans left the US for medical care in 2016; about 50 percent went to Mexico for dental procedures and another 15 percent traveled for cosmetic procedures. The Medical Tourism Index showed that the US had the highest spending for medical tourism and that figure will continue to grow in 2017.

Cancer treatment versus prayer

Need i tell you of this story making the rounds, it happened back in 2015, when a Rwandan Ambassador, Eugene Gasana’s child was diagnosed with cancer and had to be taken to the US for treatment. He said to himself “this is not right. I will build a children’s cancer unit in my own country so that other children with cancer can be helped at home”. few years from then He contracted world acclaimed Ghanaian Architect, David Adjaye to design the Ultra Modern Hospital. A few years after that incident In 2018, A Ghana’s Vice President fell ill and looked to England for treatment, and later contracted the same Ghanaian Architect to design a National Cathedral!

As to whether it was prayers that healed him or the state-of-the art healthcare facilities in that country that did, i would leave that to you. While a religious country like ours is sitting about arguing and tagging people as against religion, our very religious country is taking century loans from China, a non religious country who are schooling their children for free, opened up research & development centers, prosecutes (and sometimes kills) corrupt ex-government appointees, as a matter of fact, China produces more than 2 million Engineering students every year and churns out a new billionaire every 5 days. Come to Africa, we are busy training Pastors and building more Churches.

Long live mother Ghana!