-As He struggles to Cut Tape In National Mosque Commissioning.
President Akufo Addo has sparked concerns about his state of health and his eyesight following viral videos showing how he virtually struggled to cut the tape to commission the new National Mosque of the Islamic community on Friday.
In the video that has received widespread dissemination, President Akufo Addo held the tape in one hand but frantically groped for it for almost 30 seconds before he finally found the tape.
Even though the scissors he was weilding was practically touching the tape, the President still sniped at it fruitlessly four times before he succeeded in cutting the tape on his fifth try.
This episode has sent tongues wagging, with some critics speculating that the 77-year-old President may be losing his eyesight.
The prospect for this is disturbing, critics noted, saying it means the President may not be able to scrutinise documents that his appointees thrust in his face to sign.
President Akufo Addo is well-known for his trademark round horned-rimmed spectacles, but on this occasion, he was wearing his sunshades, with a cross-section concluding that the President’s issue with his sight may be related to the sunshades he was wearing on Friday, July 16 during the commissioning of the mega-mosque.
Others have already taken the liberty to diagnose his suspected eye problem with suggestions such as Astigmatism, a condition of the eye when there is an imperfection in the cornea or the lens.
In such instances, sufferers often find it difficult to judge distances of horizontal lines at close range, leading some to run into cloth lines.
Ironically, when he delivered his speech after the tape-cutting saga, he claimed he could see the minaret of the National Mosque from afar.
“The minaret of this mosque is very visible from many parts of Accra. For me, it is not just the beauty that it adds to Accra’s skyline that excites me necessarily. I am even more excited by the fact that, as a Christian-majority country, a symbol of Islam can beautifully adorn our landscape, and expose the beauty of religious harmony that we enjoy in Ghana, and which continues to be the envy of the rest of the world,” President Akufo Addo said.
The National Mosque funded by the Turkish government is located amidst the slums of Nima in Accra is one of the most extravagant architectures in the capital city.
The structure contains a grand mosque which is the second largest in West Africa, an office complex for the National Chief Imam, a clinic fitted with laboratories and a pharmacy, a library and a morgue.