National Cathedral Secretariat Reacts To Reasons Behind Bishop Dag Resignation

The Chairman of the Board of Trustees of National Cathedral Ghana, Apostle Prof Opoku Onyinah has broken silence over the reasons assigned to resignation by Bishop Dag Heward-Mills, founder of the LightHouse Chapel International.

In a statement, he said he led a delegation to the Office of Bishop Dag to clarify some of the concerns he raised in his resignation letter.

In a recently leaked letter addressed to the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Cathedral, the Bishop assigned various reasons for his resignation including the costs, the design, the location, the fundraising, the mobilisation of the churches, and the role of the trustees.

He is quoted to have said in the letter, “I have been a reachable and available trustee and attended every single meeting of trustees since the pandemic began, in person and by zoom, and the records will show that.

“If I say that I, as a trustee, do not know many of the financial and technical issues concerning the Cathedral, it means the discussions about the National Cathedral were held by some people outside the trustees’ meeting or perhaps in a forum that I was not present or invited to”.

He is also quoted to have decried, “the National Cathedral is said to be a Government of Ghana project, with the government taking financial decisions. Yet on another hand, at meetings, it is implied that the trustees have taken or participated in taking some decisions”.

Clarification To Bishop Dag Concerns
But in response, Apostle Onyinah explained the National Cathedral is a partnership between the State and Church, and the roles of the state have been clearly specified in the partnership as appointment of the Architect, the Land, the Secretariat and Seed Money for the preparatory phase of the work.

“The architect and the Land – the site for the National Cathedral – had already been selected by the President before the appointment of the Trustees by the President. All Trustees were aware of this.

“The selection of the contractors- RIBADE- for the project, was through a rigorous international procurement process supervised by the LEAD consultant, whose contract included the selection of a contractor for approval by the Board of Trustees.”

He said costing and selection of contractors for the project were led by the Project’s Lead Consultants as well as technical committee officially commissioned by the Board of Trustees.

Resignation Of Bishop Dag
In his resignation letter, Bishop Dag said his suggested approaches toward the construction of the Cathedral had been ignored by the Trustees.

Reacting to that, Apostle Onyinah said the Trustees of which Bishop Dag was a part have deep-seated theological differences and outstanding approaches to the development of the Cathedral.

“The challenge of such a group is that the individual leaders, with history of implementing their own organisational/denominational programme programs and vision have to be part of a collective decision-making process where their preferences might not always prevail.”

That, he said, means preferences, methods and approaches of one person cannot be adopted always.

“In this changed and unfamiliar context, some would prefer to leave the Trusteeship”, he added.

Source: opemsuo.com/Hajara Fuseini