APAASO LANDS ARE FOR STOOLS - CHIEF

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

It has emerged that claims for compensation from Apaaso in the Volta Basin Flooded Area are supposed to be stool lands instead of family/clan lands as put forward by the claimants.

This is contrary to evidence by majority of claimants whose communities were flooded during the construction of the Akosombo Hydro Electric Dam in the 1960s that the lands belonged to families and clans.

Nana Otieku Amoani Asare III who is the chief of Apaaso and Adontenhene of Akwamu Traditional Area yesterday admitted at the Commision of Enquiry investigating the payment of judgement debts that the Apaaso lands belonged to the stool even though the claims he led were in the name of individual family members.

Error

He said the ‘error’ was committed by his predecessors who had filed for compensation in the 1970s saying “Apaaso lands are stool lands but my predecessors listed those who had user rights for the payment of compensation.”

Nana Otieku Asare III said he subsequently got a power of attorney from all the claimants to chase the compensation and added that the stool signed an agreement with the original claimants to part some of the amounts to them.

Sole-Commissioner Justice Yaw Apau as a result pointed it out to the chief that he should have taken steps to make the correction before receiving payment saying “your predecessors had done the wrong thing and instead of you making the correction, you validated it.”

The chief admitted that an amount of GH¢332,306.00 was paid to him as the first tranche and due to about four court suits on the subject-matter, they have not received further payments.

He also said that they put in a claim of 20,384 acres and had processed 12,000, leaving 8,000 yet to be completed.

Otiso

Nana Obeng Acheampong II, Chief of Addo Nkwanta Otiso also testified but because he said the subject-matter was a pending High Court case at Hohoe, Justice Apau declined to look further into the matter.

Records at the commission indicated that the chief was paid a whooping GH¢592,404.03.

Olympic Stadium

Earlier, Chief Director of Ministry of Youth and Sports Alhaji Abdulai Yakubu told the commission that the government was yet to pay compensation to the Nungua Stool and Regimanuel Estates for the acquisition of 745.272 acres of land acquired under E.I. 17 for the proposed construction of Olympic Stadium.

He said the land was valued at ¢20.67 billion in 1999 and added that there was “not so much encroachments” even though, the Lands Commission has already testified that  the land is virtually taken over by encroachers.