Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
The Attorney General
has asked the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) to stay off lands belonging to developers
at East Dadekotopon in La, Accra because the military has not lawfully acquired
the property.
The military has
indicated its intention to create what it calls “security buffer zone”
requiring an area of 2,456.55 acres or 994.15 hectares around Burma Camp but
they faced fierce resistance from the owners of the land led by the East
Dadekotopon Development Trust who have gone ahead to sell the lands to private
developers with land titles.
The land owners have
not been at peace as the military in Rambo style led by a certain One Star
General has been terrorizing them, regularly pulling down their houses.
But the deputy
attorney General says it was unacceptable and nothing short of lawlessness.
The A-G came to the
conclusion after the government set up a joint team to investigate whether or
not the military had the authority to create the buffer zone using the lands in
contention, especially when they were not part of the acquired lands for
military installations.
Negotiation Team
The government’s team
was led by Deputy Attorney General, Dr Dominic Ayine with Major General B.G.
Saagbul, Commanders B.F. Asante and S.W. Anim, Colonel M.K. Gyekye-Asante, Lt.
Col. P.K. Apenkwa and Mr. N.A. Ayamdoo as members while representatives of the
East Dadekotopon Development Trust were Kojo Graham (lawyer), E. Odoi-Yemo
(Chairman of the Trust), Ebenezer Lassey-Quaye and Joeph Adjei (both trustees)
and L.S.N. Akuetteh (lawyer).
True Owner
After series of
meetings the Deputy AG wrote in a letter to both parties “It was abundantly
evident from the negotiations and from all the documentation made available for
that purpose that the Ghana Armed Forces have not disputed the fact that the
land, the subject-matter of the negotiations belongs to the East Dadekotopon
Development Trust”.
“Indeed, the Ghana
Armed Forces in the letter of July 8, 2014, the Ghana Armed Forces admitted that though there had been an attempt in the
past to acquire the land, the process of acquisition was not completed,” he
added.
High Court Decision
The minister said
when the trust sued the government through the AG over the land, the court was
“very categorical” that it was the duty of the state to go ahead and acquire
the said land under the State Lands Act as provided by law and pay due
compensation to the owners and until that was done the military had no business
to act in the manner inconsistent with the plaintiff’s ownership of the land.
Dr. Ayine said the A-G
takes took the view that the East Dadekotopon Development Trust “has a constitutionally
protected right to compensation for the proposed taking of its land for the
security buffer zone,” adding “even without a High Court decision, the Ghana Armed
Forces could not proceed to use the land without following due process of law
and paying compensation.”
He also said that the
High Court decision had been overturned on appeal by the defendant saying “until
that is done, it is binding on the government and for that matter the military
and must of necessity be respected,” and added “any attempt to enforce the
creation of a security buffer zone outside of the framework of law is
unconstitutional.”
AG’s Advice
The AG said if the
military intended to proceed with the creation of a security buffer zone they
should commence the formal process through the Ministry of Defence for the
compulsory acquisition and pay prompt and adequate compensation to the owners
of the land saying “as was evident from the negotiations, there is no dispute
respecting the legitimate security and, for that matter, public purpose to
which the land with be put.”
He said until that
was done, the military “must not engage in acts of trespass to the land or by
means of the use of force to seek to prevent the current land owners from
developing their lands.”
Complaint Of Harassment
On April 2, 2015,
land owners of the area in contention held a news conference and alleged acts
of intimidation and illegal destruction of property carried out by persons
claiming to act for the Ghana Armed Forces.
They claimed the
military through the media had also justified the demolition of their property
on the land but insisted that the claim by the military of the ownership of the
land was not correct.
“For any land to
become public land, including land acquired for use by the military, it must
have been properly acquired by the State in keeping with the constitution and
relevant laws,” the land owners had insisted.
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