The National Mosque and the alleged role of the former government in its construction have frequently been highlighted in the midst of the dispute that has dogged the construction of the National Cathedral.
Sammy Gyamfi, the communications officer for the opposition National Democratic Congress, is the most recent to bring up the facility in Kanda in a Cathedral conversation. Gyamfi believes that former president John Dramani Mahama facilitated Turkish government financing to help create the facility.
Sammy Gyamfi made comments on a political talk show on Peace FM on June 27, 2022, criticizing President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for the issues that have plagued the project and asserting that the administration should have allowed Christians to employ the alleged Muslim fundraising model.
“This particular Cathedral, there are a lot of issues with it because of how President Akufo-Addo personalized it from the outset.
“It is not as if the churches and Christians came up to put efforts together just as our Muslim brothers sometime ago came together to build the National Mosque, so (that) the government should help by playing a certain facilitating role.
“So, when President Mahama came into office, his first trip was to Turkey to facilitate that grant from the Turkish government to build that mosque,” he claimed.
According to reports, a non-governmental organization rather than the Turkish government provided funding for the National Mosque’s construction.
The claim that the NGO built the structure without any assistance from the state has also been rejected as incorrect, along with the claim that the government was involved only through facilitation.
COMOG contests the same claim.
When Dr. Opoku-Mensah of the National Cathedral of Ghana made comments on GBC’s Talking Point show to the effect that government played a facilitative role in the construction of the National Mosque, the Coalition of Muslim Organizations, Ghana (COMOG) disputed a similar assertion made by him.
Following a denial of the charges by COMOG in a statement on Monday, June 13, 2022, Dr. Opoku-Mensah apologized and withdraw the remarks.
“What I had been informed was ‘facilitation’ – but not ‘state resources’ – did not actually happen. I retract, and apologize, for the use of ‘state facilitation’ in my response, and deeply regret the pain it might have caused the COMOG and the Muslim Umma in Ghana,” the CEO pleaded.
Dr. Opoku-assertion Mensah’s was made to defend the government’s decision to provide state funding for the National Cathedral’s construction, but the president of COMOG, Hajj Abdel-Manan Abdel Rahman, branded the assertions an intentional fabrication in a statement.