Supreme Court rules in Osu Stool Affairs

By William Yaw Owusu .

Saturday, 10 June 2006
The Supreme Court in Accra has ruled that the Osu Mantse is the rightful and proper person to represent the Osu Stool in litigation.

The court has therefore dismissed an appeal filed by Nii Ako Nortei II, Mankralo of Osu, that sought to prevent Nii Nortey Owuo III, the Osu Mantse, from praying an Accra High Court to be substituted as the sole person who could represent the stool in litigation in a substantive case.

The five-member panel, chaired by Mr. Justice William A. Atuguba, awarded a ў5 million cost in favour of the Osu Mantse.
The Mankralo had appealed against the Osu Mantse’s decision at the Court of Appeal before going to the Supreme Court and this is in a substantive matter between the Osu Stool in which the Mankralo is an interested party and Unilever Ghana Limited and the Osu Mantse.

In the judgment, the Supreme Court held that “the Osu Mantse, co-plaintiff appellant as occupant of the Osu Stool, is the proper person entitled to sue and be sued in respect of land title to which is vested in Osu stool.”

The court described as startling the first round of appeal by the Mankralo to the effect that on the strength of the evidence there were other persons such as the appellant who could represent the Osu stool in litigation.

“The question of whether the Osu Mantse is the proper person to represent the Osu stool in litigation is not a question of fact but of customary law,” it said.

The court said the appellant’s argument that “it is undesirable that a native court should insist upon an express authority given by the stool occupant since this might result in persons other then the natural representatives representing the stool” reinforced the fact that the Osu Mantse “is the rightful person and therefore has the primary function of representing the stool in litigation”.

It said the appellant’s counsel had argued that the matter affected chieftaincy which the High Court had no jurisdiction to determine but “on the facts of this case, no real or genuine question arose concerning chieftaincy.”

Appellants counsel had submitted that in a letter dated August 5, 1986 the then Greater Accra Regional Administration Officer had said government had withdrawn recognition from the intervener as Osu Mantse and that all processes leading to the acquisition of his status as a chief had been “utterly nullified.”

But the Supreme Court held that “it is common knowledge that the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) did not alter the substantive positions of chiefs in the manner claimed for the letter of the Regional Administrative Office. The PNDC did so through legislation.”

The court said “it is not new learning that mere governmental withdrawal of recognition as it obtained before the 1979 and 1992 constitution of Ghana, operated to deprive the affected chief not of his customary status and functions as a chief but only of his statutory functions.”