PLATO’S FOLDER: If we faulted Akufo-Addo over National Cathedral location, what is Sentuo’s $1.3bn village doing at 37?

On Tuesday, September 15, 2026, I was stepping out towards the Afrikiko area, adjacent the Jubilee House, to buy food when I noticed the traffic on the Giffard Road had suddenly become hectic. Cars were barely moving towards the Airport stretch of the boulevard.

I was wondering what was happening, who was coming, and whether there had been an accident at the 37 Military Hospital area, only to return to find all TV sets in our office showing the same thing –the commissioning of a project at which President John Mahama was present.

I had seen the promo of ‘Garden Above Accra’ running on TV the previous day but I did not pay much attention to it, because, in Accra, every new estate calls itself a garden, a city, or a village.

But that afternoon, watching all channels showing President John Dramani Mahama at 10 Giffard Road for the Sentuo Airport Garden City, a $1.3 billion project of 582 premium apartments, a 600-room hotel and a 2,500-capacity conference centre, I realised this was not just another estate launch.

I saw what I consider to be a national security zone being sacrificed for money. That is what I intend to address in this edition of my Folder.

For those who have never taken time to study that enclave, 10 Giffard Road is not the place you go and put up a shopping mall and call it development, because the land there is not just prime, it is sacred for our national security architecture.

In a walking distance from that site sits the 37 Military Hospital, which is not just another hospital where civilians go to buy paracetamol or panadol, but Ghana’s UN Level IV trauma facility and the State’s emergency response hospital, the place we run to when everything has collapsed, when there is a major accident on the motorway, when soldiers are wounded, when the nation is at war and we need a hospital that can still function under extensive pressure.

Behind that hospital, and scattered around it, are the military officers’ residences, Defence Intelligence and other installations, Defence Ministry within Burma Camp, and the National Signals Bureau that handles some of our most sensitive communications intelligence. If you throw a stone from the Sentuo site, you will hit a place that directly feeds into how this country defends itself.

So, when we say we have given 582 premium apartments, a 600-room luxury hotel, a 2,500-capacity conference centre, a shopping mall, a private clinic and rooftop sky gardens to a foreign private company to build right there, what we are actually saying is that, we have allowed a private business to build a city that will, by its height and location, overlook installations inside our own security bedroom.

I have a simple question to ask our leaders; would Beijing allow a Ghanaian private developer to go and acquire a similar stretch of land next to the headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army, mount 24-hour CCTV, deploy facial recognition access, private patrols, drones for site inspection, and then start selling apartments to expatriates with a view directly into the homes of Chinese generals?

Would China even allow a Ghanaian to take a selfie near their military hospital, let alone build a village overlooking it? But in Ghana, we say it is investment, we say it is $1.3 billion, and we clap, because we have a strange habit of confusing any foreign money with wisdom, even when that money is buying the ground under our own boots.

This is not paranoia, it has happened and the evidence is available. In 2012, China built the $200 million African Union Headquarters in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, and handed it over to Africa as a gift, and we celebrated it as a symbol of China-Africa friendship. It was beautiful, it was modern, and for five straight years, it was bugged.

Every night between midnight and 2 a.m., data was leaving the AU building and going to servers in Shanghai. When the AU’s own IT team noticed the spike, they called in security experts from Algeria and France who swept the building and found microphones hidden in desks and walls, and a whole system that had been built into the infrastructure from day one. Le Monde broke the story in January 2018, and while China denied it, the AU quietly admitted it by ripping out all the Chinese-provided servers, buying its own, and banning sensitive meetings from that building.

That is the country whose private developer we have now given the most sensitive square in Accra to build a village which, per its own published design, includes 24/7 private surveillance, rooftop access, and sightlines towards our military installations.

If a Chinese-built complex could be compromised for five years without detection, what questions should we be asking about a village that will house thousands of expatriates, with its own clinic, its own mall, and its own security protocols, sitting close to our Signals Bureau?

If we blamed Akufo-Addo for the location of the National Cathedral, why are we doing worse at the 37 enclave?

When William Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the former President, decided to build the National Cathedral, many Ghanaians did not have a problem with the cathedral in principle, rather, where he wanted to put it, aside from wasting public funds on it.

Right in the middle of Ridge, pulling down judges’ bungalows, creating a needless traffic in the heart of the capital, when the same building could have gone to the outskirts of the capital and still served God. This was the reality many Ghanaians couldn’t wrap their heads around over this whole cathedral, aside from the State funds that were wantonly wasted on it.

On August 27, 2026, when the Minister of Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, Mahama Ayariga, was being vetted in Parliament, he said something, that personally, he has no issue with the cathedral project itself, but rather the location.

“I don’t think there is anything wrong with the idea, I think it was a good idea that was badly implemented. I personally had issues with the location.”

So, if we blame the previous administration for locating a cathedral at such a congested and sensitive place in Accra, why are we now committing what I deem a bigger crime by selling an even more sensitive security enclave to a foreign group from a country with a documented controversy over the bugging of the AU Headquarters?

This is where you realise that Ghanaian governance has become a theatre of selective anger. We shout about a cathedral sitting near the Parliament, but we clap when a foreign company takes over the land that sits near our security zone.

Popular fetish priest, Nana Kwaku Bonsam, appeared on Onua TV’s morning show, Maakye, on Thursday, September 3, 2026 and said something that should have embarrassed everyone sitting on the National Security Council. He said the cathedral should be relocated to the Atwea Mountains and the current site should be used for a hospital where patients with kidney issues and other critical cases would be treated.

You may not like Kwaku Bonsam, you may not believe in his gods, but when a fetish priest starts sounding more strategic than your generals, you should be worried. He understands what our planners have refused to understand, that when you have a congested capital, you do not pile more concrete on the little breathing space left for the state to function.

If a fetish priest would advise relocation of the cathedral to Atwea, why couldn’t our national security and government officials push this $1.3 billion village to Pokuase-Amasaman, to East Legon Hills, to the Tema enclave along the motorway, to Appolonia City, or any of the supposed plush areas that are begging for investment?

Are we so hungry for $1.3 billion that we have forgotten some lands cannot be for sale?

PLATO’S FOLDER: Why President Mahama must not be the new Akufo-Addo

The writer, Felix Anim-Appau, works with the online unit at Media General. The views expressed in this piece are his personal opinions and do not reflect, in any form or shape, those of the Media General Group, where he works. His email address is [email protected], and he can be found on X as @platofintegrity.