A four-year-old legal battle between Nana Oppong Adade IV and Nana Abena Fremponpmaa II, chief and Queenmother respectively of Boeing, on one side, and former Member of Parliament for Mampong, Francis Addai Nimo and Madam Afia Buor of Bobin, has ended with a judgment in the defendants’ favour.
Nana Adade and Nana Frempomaa, the Plaintiffs, have since December 17, 2018 filed a suit against Addai Nimo and one other, contesting the ownership of a 30 acre parcel of land at Esereso.
The Plaintiffs, per their statement of claim, were claiming recovery of possession of the land in dispute, general and special damages, an order of perpetual injunction to restrain the Defendants from further causing damages to the said land, as well as cost.
The Plaintiffs, represented in court by Tony Mensah-Aborampah, Esq., alleged that the disputed land forms part of their Stool land, which also serve as farmlands for queenmothers.
They claimed that when the second plaintiff was enstooled Queenmother in 2015, the said land was entrusted to her as custom demands for farming.
Addai Nimo, the first defendant, in his statement of defence filed by his Counsel, Hagar Addo Esq. countered the claim by the Plaintiff and stated that the land in dispute forms part of Mampong Stool land, which was acquired by one Yaw Bediako, the grandfather of the second Defendant.
He stated that it also formed part of 63 acre land acquired from the second Defendant in 2006, having inherited it from her uncle.
The Defendant contended that the Plaintiffs trespassed and encroached on his legally acquired land.
On December 16, 2022 the Mampong High Court gave judgment in favour of the Defendants, having analysed evidence deduced by the parties.
The court also took into account whether the disputed land forms part of the Bobin Amoawise stool lands and whether the first Defendant destroyed crops on the land, as alleged by the Plaintiffs.
The Presiding Judge, His Lordship Justice George Appiah Kwabeng, however, dismissed the Plaintiffs’ action as unmeritorious.
The court said the Plaintiffs had not proven their title to the land in dispute to the standard required by law and, therefore, not entitled to the reliefs sought.
“Their root to title and mode of acquisition could not be conclusively proved on the balance of probabilities”, the judge explained why the Plaintiffs action against the Defendants failed.
As a result of the position of the court, a cost of GHC10,000 was awarded to the Defendant against the Plaintiffs.
