Speaker Bagbin Petitioned Over Tema Manhean Lands
The office of the Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, has been petitioned to intervene and bring a stop to the indiscriminate sale of lands at Tema Manhean, the home town and spiritual home of the people of Tema.
The petitioner, Mr. Stephen Ashitey Adjei, alias Moshake, wants the Speaker to use his high office to cause an investigation into the land sales and bring perpetrators to book.
Mr. Ashitey Adjei, who is affectionately called Moshake, is also the Secretary to the Tema-Sakumor Shrine.
“These indiscriminate land sales threaten our very existence as a people because Tema Manhean is not only our home town, but our spiritual home as well,” Moshake told journalists after submitting a 9-page petition to the Speaker’s Secretariat in Accra on Monday.
Reportedly, the petition accuses the Tema Development Corporation as the chief perpetrator of the land sale, and allegedly, it does so in connivance with a few elders of the Tema Traditional Council (TTC).
Speaking to journalists after submitting the petition, Moshake said that the indiscriminate land sale is part of a general culture of greed that has taken centre stage at the TTC.
“These same greedy elders collect monies from the many companies and landed properties in Tema, but they don’t account to anybody,” Moshake said.
He cited for example, what he said was a recent meeting that a few elders at the TTC held with the Chairman of a new oil refinery that has controversially been sited at Tema Manhean, Sentuo.
“After they entered the meeting with Mr. Xu Ninquan, the chairman of sentuo group of companies, they signed a memorandum of understanding with the Sentuo Oil Refinery limited.”
According to him, that MoU paved the way for Sentuo to set up its refinery at Manhean which is a residential area and now the people are suffering. Later, tema manhean clan heads were taken to the sentuo oil refinery to convince them for the company to gain acceptability. “When they did a test run of the refinery recently, people could not sleep because of the sheer noise.”
Similar to the selfish, inconsiderate attitude that the elders showed in the case of Sentuo, Moshake said that selfsame elders have also been taking monies and other benefits from other companies and factories in the industrial city without accounting to anybody.
“As I speak, VALCO has built many public toilets for us but these have been hijacked by these same elders who are benefitting from it and not accounting to anybody.”
With regard to the indiscriminate sale of lands, Moshake said there was the urgent need to investigate because Tema Manhean lands are increasingly being poached out to outsiders, we are being sacked from our home town.
“And let me sound a word of caution to the people who are also buying these lands from TDC; TDC does not own Tema Manhean, neither does it have any authority or power to sell our lands. And so those buying lands from the TDC are doing so at their own risk.”
Explaining, he said that tema Manhean lands do not fall under the administrative authority of TDC because the TDC did not build Tema Manhean as part of the construction of the Tema harbour and the Tema township projects.
“Before the Nkrumah government compulsorily acquired the lands for the construction of the tema harbour and the industrial city, we the people of Tema were on our land.
Ashaiman was our farm land. The government had proposed that we relocate to Ashaiman but because we are primarily fishers, and the distance from Ashaiman to the sea was long, we did not really relocate. That being the case, the Nkrumah government decided on the compromise solution of relocating us to Tema Manhean from our traditional home which was at the place where the Meridian hotel is currently located,” Moshake narrated.
According to him, “TDC was then asked to develop the harbour and the industrial city while the English office of three consultants, Maxwell Fry, Jane Drew and Denys Lasdun, were tasked to design and develop Tema Manhean as a settlement for us. And so, Manhean has never been under the authority of the TDC for it to have the rights to sell our lands.”
Saying that it took the government seven years to relocate them, Moshake reiterated that Manhean has since become the hometown and spiritual home of the indigenes of Tema.
“So how do you now get up and sell our lands anyhow without even proper documentation, do you want us to become a landless people?” he asked rhetorically.
Regarding the connivance of some few elders at the TTC with the TDC, Moshake said those elders too do not have the right to sell the lands because they are only custodians and not owners of the lands. “Can the Asantehene, the Yaa- Naa or the Awomefia of Anlo just get up and start selling Ashanti, Dagbon or Anlo lands simply because they are custodians?” he asked again, reiterating that they cannot.
He was unhappy that the indiscriminate land sellers do not even issue proper land title documentation to the people that they sell lands to, only giving site plans and receipts without indentures.
“In some cases manholes and sewage lines are sold to buyers who are sick, meanwhile the buyer must be well which is known in latin as Caveat Emptor under the sale of goods act”. Moshake said.
According to him, the indiscriminate land sale has so engulfed Tema Manhean that even a piece of land belonging to his family, has been sold to the Roman Catholic Church in dollars without any compensation.
“My father bought that land in 1979 from the then Acting Tema Mantse, LM Adjei, after the death of Nii Adjei Oninku. At the time, the place was a cemetery, but later the TDC and the TTC sold the largest part of the land to the Catholic Church and demolished our building”. Moshake lamented.
He vowed that the remaining land would not be given to anybody.
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