State repossession of Parks & Gardens land great step
Under normal circumstances, it should not be news or all that significant if the government repossesses land wrongfully or illegally taken away from the state.
However, these days, the government’s repossession of state land has become big news because of what is going on in the country.
Some people have the audacity to grab both state and private lands without recourse to what the consequences would be for the state or the private owner.
The journal ScienceDirect, Volume 87, published September, 2019, has an article with the title ‘Land Dispossessions and Water Appropriations: Political Ecology of Land and Water Grabs in Ghana’, which, in part, gives a picture of land grabs in the country and the effects.
In fact, the article states that Ghana is among the countries in Africa that have gained notoriety for land grabbing, because many deals are undocumented, and the precise figures on the extent of land grabbed are unknown.
Today, in Ghana, the impudence of dispossessing the state, communities, families and individuals of their lands is on the increase and in some cases the lands are deemed lost forever because the owners are rendered powerless.
Some of the individuals who have suffered such dispossessions have even lost their lives, with others having lost their livelihoods or every hope of having a good life.
In the light of these, the announcement by the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development that it has taken full control of the Department of Parks and Gardens land at Cantonments in Accra gives a glimmer of hope that all is not lost for the state, entities, families and individuals who are battling to repossess lands forcibly taken away from them.
Is it not intriguing that a private real estate developer could garner the force and muster the courage to dispossess the Department of Parks and Gardens, a state entity, of its 2.6-acre land, whose repossession should result in litigation?
Definitely there are people behind the deal – chiefs or state officials, who must be brought to book because such state loss of land is rampant in the country.
Those who care must get the master plans of all the district, municipal and metropolitan assemblies in the country and would have a good picture of how much land developers, both individuals and private companies, have dispossessed the government of.
You would get worried how lands meant for roads, markets and other public amenities have been taken over by developers who have gone scot-free.
Would such illegal takeovers stop?
The Ghanaian Times would find it very difficult to give “yes” or “no” answer to that questions because rumours of politicians and public officials using underhand dealings to dispossess the state and even some individuals of their lands are rife.
Besides, the sale of lands by chiefs and other traditional leaders without recourse to legal means and spatial planning has not yet stopped.
Everything points to the fact that issues with land and proper physical development of the country must be relooked at.
And that action must include the state using legal means to retrieve all illegally-acquired state lands and the courts ensuring justice for powerless individuals, families and communities dispossessed of their lands.
