Tension is mounting at Atwima Boaso in the Atwima Nwabiagya Municipal Assembly in the Ashanti Region, over resold of old houses and its adjoining lands belonging to various families by a self-acclaimed chief of Boaso, Solomon Amankwa, with stool name Nana Kofi Bimpong II.
The affected families are irritated due to the adamant posture of the said chief and the rapid rate at which their lands are been developed in the name of the Asantehene; Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, in what has been termed “Fi Saase or Asefua”.
“The private developer is in haste to develop the land due to the volatile situation surrounding its sale and he is assiduously working at dawn and at midnight in order to complete the project in an expeditious time,” the aggrieved families alluded.
According to them, they were not given prior information concerning the sale and their consents were not sought for.
Sources disclosed that, the aggrieved families’ several warnings to both the said chief and the private developer to rescind the sale and halt the project respectively proved futile.
Lands Officer’s Intervention
However, it has also emerged that even the intervention of a Lands Officer from the Atwima Nwabiagya Municipal Assembly, did not yield any positive result upon issuance of warnings to the workers on site to stop work and produce permits.
Apparently, the self-acclaimed chief, Nana Bimpong, asked the Lands Officer to allow the developer to continue the project as he is preparing to regularize his documents at the latter’s offices, a situation which is in total breach of the Lands Commission Act, where permit must be obtained before construction begins and not vice versa.
“All physical development involving the erection of any structure, making of structural alteration or transformation of any structure, execution of any works or installation of any fittings in connection with any structure, engineering, mining or other operations on, in, under or over land or the material change in the existing use of land or building comprising among others the sub-division of land, disposal of waste on land including the discharge of effluent into a body of still or running water and the erection of an advertisement or other hoarding among others shall require a development permit. Act 480, Section 48; Act 936, Sections 91 (1) & 106 (1) and Act 925 Sections 113 & 117 (1&2); ”
An angry member of one of the affected families recently told The Herald; “These family houses and their adjoining lands at Boaso Old Town are our heritage. These are where our Mothers, Grandmothers and even our Great grandmothers were born. They have been in existence for over three hundred years and were owned by individual families centuries ago. Therefore no chief or a purported chief can claim ownership now and for that matter resell them to anybody. It is totally in contravention of Asante Customs and tradition to sell ‘Efi Saase’ or ‘Asefua’ to any private developer. ”
He further stated; “Even though we are not against sales of lands anywhere in this country for developmental purposes and we still remain law-abiding citizens, we will not countenance any attempt to sell our pride, our heritage, our ancestral home without our notice. This is pure broad daylight robbery and authorities must intervene to avoid any unforeseen mayhem.”
The charged affected families have since unanimously invoked the Great Oath of Asantehene otherwise known as ‘Asantehene Ntamkese or Otumfuo Ntamkese’.
The ‘Ntamkese’ was to order the developer to halt the project until the issue is amicably addressed by Otumfuo. But as stubborn as the developer as well as the chief had always been, they defied the Great Oath of Asantehene, ‘Otumfuo Ntamkese,’ invoked by the families and are still hastily developing the land as of press time.
The Herald, is informed that a member of one of the affected families who accompanied Asantehene’s emissaries to invoke the Great Oath of Asantehene (Otumfuo Ntamkese) had allegedly received numerous death threats on his phone from the self-acclaimed chief, Nana Kofi Bimpong and his cohorts immediately after the invocation.
“They have threatened to kill me if I do not comply with their advice to stop chasing after them over the matter,” he lividly bemoaned.
More to come!
Source: Heraldghana