Krachiwura Nana Mprah Besemuna III (right) with his lawyer Kwame Yankyera
Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
The Krachiwura, Nana
Mprah Besemuna III, was yesterday subjected to a barrage of questions by the
Commission of Enquiry investigating the payment of judgement debts.
Records before
Sole-Commissioner Justice Yaw Apau of the Court of Appeal indicated that the
retired Commissioner of Police, who represented his elder brother, Nana Asetena
Mensah, aka B.K. Mensah, played a vital role in the Volta Basin compensation
claims following the construction of the Akosombo Hydro Electric Dam.
Protest
However, he protested
before the commission that it was wrong for anybody to assume that the process
for compensation that led to the collection of huge sums of money from the
government, started only recently.
Cabinet Approval
Cabinet, in July 2008, approved a consolidated
amount of compensation totalling GH¢138 million for various stools/families in
Pai, Apaaso, Makango, Ahmandi and Kete Krachi Traditional Areas. An estimated
57 groups were said to have benefited from the amount.
Records at the commission revealed that GH¢71
million has been paid so far to the various claimants and the disbursement of
the remaining GH¢67 million has been put on hold to enable the government deal
with discrepancies in the payments.
Some of the witnesses who appeared before the
commission have been tendering in evidence site plans that did not have dates
but had purportedly been used to claim the money from the Lands Commission.
Some of the documents also bore the names of
individual claimants; but the witnesses have claimed they were making the
claims on behalf of families or clans.
Apau Shocked
Justice Apau has variously expressed shock at
how the Lands Commission could have proceeded to order the release of the
various amounts of money to the claimants based on the documents the witnesses
are tendering before the commission.
Furthermore, he did not understand why
communities that were resettled by the government in the 1960s, given communal
lands and paid compensation for crops destroyed by the Volta River floods could
turn around to claim compensation almost 50 years down the line.
Asetena Mensah Factor
All the witnesses have been telling the commission that one Nana Asetena
Mensah, a leader in the communities in Krachi, was the one who had commissioned
Kwadwo Ababio & Co, a consultant and surveyors, to survey the submerged
area out of which the individual plotting were done.
The commission has made it clear that Nana Asetena Mensah never came
forward to make any claims. Rather, he delegated the Krachiwura, who he said
had no stake in the lands, to lead the chase for the compensation.
Krachiwura’s Testimony
Nana Besemuna III told the commission that as the
paramount chief of the Krachi Traditional Area, he had the authority of the
Kantankofore family, led by Nana Asetena Mensah who was once an MP of the area,
to put in the claims.
He said he collected a total of GH¢1,441,352.20 in
five tranches—representing about 27,000 acres—for Kantankofore and added that
Nana Asetena Mensah passed on at age 96 when he was preparing to also appear
before the commission.
1974/75 claims
He said the claims for compensation for families in
the Volta Basin flooded areas was spearheaded by Nana Asetena Mensah around
1974/75 when he commissioned a survey of the whole submerged area.
Subsequently, Lands Department in 1978 acknowledged his
letter for compensation for 952,900.20 acres that was being claimed by all the
families.
He said it was later that one Nana Ofosu Yiadom from
the Pai Traditional Area also mobilised his people to claim compensation and
used Kwadwo Abban & Co as the consultant and surveyors.
Conjuring Acreages
The Krachiwura admitted
before the packed commission that the acreages of claimants overlapped, saying,
“it was difficult getting governments upon governments to accept the fact that
our people deserved compensation and when one government finally decided to pay
compensation we were adjusting lands so that there will be peace in the area.”
He said the
issue of Volta River Reimbursable Fund which had been set up for the area was
the subject matter of a pending court action and could not give further
details.
Pai Katanga
The Paramount
Chief of Pai Kantanga, Nana Diawuo Bediako II, aka Stephen Attah Kwasi Akowuah,
also testified on the Pai Development Fund he set up which he said was also the
subject matter of a pending court action.
He said apart
from the first tranche of GH¢63,159, all subsequent payments were lodged in
court due to the litigation, saying, “what has been paid before the court is
around GH¢1, 266,494.65.”
He said he
started pursuing the claim at a time when he was not even the chief, adding
that the Paiman Development Fund came in the 1970s.
