Kwame Gyan lambasts civilian, military regimes over land management

By William Yaw Owusu

Wednesday March 17, 2010
Kwame Gyan, a law lecturer at the Law Faculty of the University of Ghana says both civilian and military regimes should take responsibility for the way and manner they managed land in the country.

“All political parties and military elements that got the chance to govern or rule are guilty of corruption in the land administration system of this country. The hullabaloo about land is no news. It started right from independence.”

Mr. Gyan was speaking on the topic “The impact of Ghana’s land administration structure and role of politics in land administration,” at a forum on land administration in Accra on Friday.

It was organized by the Center for Democratic Development (CDD) in collaboration with Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF) under the theme “Executive discretion and property rights: Practitioners’ assessment.”

Mr. Gyan said “I have been a lawyer for the Lands Commission for many years but I do not even know the criteria used in the allocation of government lands,” he complained.

He said military governments had more inclusive and open-door allocation policies than civilian governments, adding “the AFRC regime was the least guilty; perhaps it was as a result of their short stay in office.”

“My search showed that civilian governments allocated government lands to themselves, party members, functionaries, cronies and sympathizers,”, adding “there is an adage which says show me where you live and I can show you your political party.”

Recounting how land had been mismanaged by subsequent governments, Mr. Gyan, an expert in land issues said “when the CPP government was in office, the President’s office allocated a large portion of the Kanda and Nyaniba Estates to party functionaries called the Socialist Boys while General Acheampong’s interference in the Ada Songhor Salt project area has left behind a protracted land dispute that will never go away.”

He said that the situation has worsened in the last 20 years when there was an unprecedented assault on state lands particularly in the Greater Accra Region adding that the allocation of lands around the Interational Students Hostel near the airport was shrouded in secrecy- “some of the names purporting to own those lands sound strange. Can they come and show their faces with their identity cards?”

He said “if your party does not come to power then you will never have the chance to own a house or land in a government area.”

He warned that “the way governments have been allocating state lands to their followers poses a threat to national security and cohesion,” adding “I am happy that at least they have all come to the realization that the practice is wrong and something has to be done about it.”

Mr. Gyan further said that the constitutional requirements attached to the management of lands in the country had given those in government the opportunity to abuse the system and called for its entire overhaul.

He said for instance that even though Article 265 of the constitution guarantees the independence of the Lands Commission to operate, the same constitution in Article 258 (3) gives the sector minister the power to provide policy direction for the commission in the management of lands in the country, saying “Most of the systems that we create whether by design does not make the system work.”

He suggested that government raise the status of the Lands Commission to the same level as the Electoral Commission so that there would not be any undue interference in the management of the administration of land in the country.

“We have to do something serious and dramatic about how we manage our lands otherwise we are going to be in serious trouble. We need a robust land administration system to manage a modern economy.”

Dr. Nii Armah Josaiah Ayeh, another law lecturer at the same faculty who spoke on “The right of eminent domain,” traced how the country’s land laws had developed from 1876 and said “there had been an assault on the country’s land laws in modern times where most traditional laws had been replaced with modern ones.”

He said the indigenes of the Greater Accra Region are the most affected in terms land appropriation, making many local people landless with the lands going into the hands of politicians and public servants.

He said the lack of transparency in the administration of land had led to needless mistrust between governments and some traditional authorities.

Dr. Ayeh asked the government to encourage private title insurance companies into the system to bring security in the management of land.

Nana Agyei Ampofo, Board Chairman of the Lands Commission said such a development would help the public to know how the commission manages lands in the country.

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