Chiefs Of  Dawhenya Have Called on Akufo- Addo,IGP Intervention To Stop Ongoing Unlawful Demolition By Ronidany Company Limited In Dawhenya

Members of the Arden Darpoh family of Dawhenya in the Ningo-Prampram District of the Greater Accra region have cautioned the Ronidany Company Limited (RCL), a Ghanaian-owned real estate firm in Prampram to cease the continuous demolition of properties on a parcel of land which it was claiming ownership of it.

They stated that the continuous practices of the company with the tacit support of the joint efforts by some police officers from the Ghana Police Service and soldiers of Ghana Army Enforce (GAF) to storm the area and carried out unlawful demolition of their building structures had rendered thousands of the residents homeless.

They lamented their efforts to tell the owners of the company and police officers and soldiers to stop the demolition of their houses built on their ancestral land and wait for the determination of the case pending in the law court on the same property have been ignored.

The demolition exercise has angered the chiefs and elders in Dawhenya for which they called on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to urgently intervene in the matter by way of asking the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Minister of Interior, Minister of Defense, and Minster National Security to call police and soldiers including the owners of the company to order since the case is still in court.

The family issued the caution when RCL failed to appear in Tema High Court on Wednesday, March 23, 2022, for the hearing of a suit with a number LC/174/2021 filed against it for the determination of the ownership of the land in question.

On Monday, March 21, residents who had acquired plots of the land together with the Arden Darpoh family staged a protest against the demolition of their properties supervised by masked armed military and police personnel allegedly hired by RCL.

The residents numbering about 300 had their fence walls built around their plots of land broken down while others had their ongoing projects razed down in the early hours of 21 Monday, March around 4 am.

According to the secretary of the family, Mr. Solomon Sarpong, the Arden Darpoh family had been the only custodian of the said land situated and lying at Dawhenya opposite the Central University.

Pending the determination of the case from a suit filed against RCL at the Tema High Court by the Arden Darpoh family, Mr. Sarpong wondered why operatives of the defendant with armed security men invaded the place and supervised the demolition of over 300 structures on Monday, March 21, 2022, while the next court hearing was two days away, Wednesday,y, March 23, 2022

The case had been adjourned to Tuesday, April 12, 2022.

Explaining the ownership of the parcel of land to this reporter, he said the Arden Darpoh family were the custodian of the land and granted many plots to other people over the years for development.

A petition dated July 14, 2021, by the Arden Darpoh family to the office of the President and copied to the Justice of the Supreme Court, Office of the Attorney General, and other state agencies indicated that the grantors of the said parcel of land were Dokutso Tei Kwabla and Henry Teye Kwabla as administrators of the estate of their late father, Nene Forza Tei Kwabla of Old Ningo who according to the petition, had no custody over the land in question.

This was after their quest for the declaration of title to a 33,000-acre land at Bundase near Old Ningo failed through a dismissal of their cases from the high court through appeals to the Supreme Court between 2012 and 2017.

A 1, 996.40 acres of the Arden Darpoh land at Dawhenya was then granted RCL by the two persons on October 20, 2015, at the blindside of the Arden Darpoh family.

According to the petition, RCL by a judgment with unknown defendants which turned out to be false according to the Arden Darpoh family, obtained an order for the issue of a writ of possession dated March 28, 2020.

By the writ of possession, armed police personnel had been stationed on the land since April 2020 till date.

Through the petition which was also copied to the Ministries of Interior, Defense, National Security, Lands, and Natural Resources, Lands Commission, Legal Department of the Ghana Police, Survey and Mapping Division, the Arden Darpoh family has urged the above state institutions to step in to ensure justice to avoid any future clashes.

Efforts to speak with officials of the RCL proved futile since the reporter did not meet them at the demolition site on Monday 21, 2022 and at the court on Wednesday 23, 2022.