The Lands Division of the High Court in Tema has finally granted a Writ of Possession of Hwakpo Lands in Ada to the Ackwerh Family of Hwakpo.
The Head of the Ackwerh family, in July 2014 filed a suit against the Chief of Adokorpey, Nene Jonathan T. A. Addo III and eleven other natives of Adokorpey for illegally encroaching on lands belonging to the Ackwerh family of Hwakpo.
The Ackwerhs sought the court to declare that all parcels of land situated lying and being at Hwakpo Ada in the Dangme East District in the Greater Accra Region and bounded on the north by land measuring a total distance of 6,045.7 feet, on the east by 7,252. 8 feet, south by a total distance of 8,164.1 and on the west by a total distance of 2,895.2 feet more or less and containing an approximate area of 891.446 acres of land is the property of the Ackwerh family.
The Plaintiff also sought a perpetual injunction restraining the defendants and any other persons from entering or interfering with the said property, including an order ejecting the defendants from the property immediately.
In his statement of claim, the head of the Ackwerh family, Ernest Samuel Ackwerh informed the court that their late grandmother, one Adikuor Puplampu, gifted the land in question to her children and husband and has occupied it over the years.
However, the Defendants averred that the land belongs to the Adibiawe family and is under the control of one Nene Teye Puplampu for and on behalf of the clan.
They denied that they have encroached on the plaintiff’s land and described the allegations as bogus and fraudulent.
However, after cross-examinations and both sides turning in evidence, the presiding judge, Her Ladyship Mrs Elizabeth Ankumah, on the 28th May 2021 entered a final judgment by granting the plaintiff, who is the head of the Ackwerh family, all the requests and charged the defendant twenty-five thousand cedis (GH¢25,000) to pay to the plaintiff.
Soon after the judgement, the defendants, Nene Jonathan Tetteh Addo and the eleven others, on the 16th of July 2023 served a notice of appeal but have since failed to pursue the intended appeal.
On the 1st of May 2023, the plaintiff filed to be given a Writ of Possession by the High Court and was granted by His Lordship Justice Kwasi Boakye.
The court did not accept an earlier motion for a stay of execution moved by the defendants with a seventeen-paragraph affidavit in support.
It was the argument of the council of the plaintiff amongst others in an eleven-paragraph affidavit in opposition to the Defendant that the Applicant is scheming to buy time.
The council argued that the applicant continued to sell the plaintiff’s lands at Hwakpo, ownership of which has been affirmed by the court, hence, the need to throw them out of the land before they cause havoc to unsuspecting prospective purchasers of land for residential purposes.
The court, upon hearing the arguments against the stay of execution, granted the Ackwerh family the Writ of Possession.
The head of the Ackwerh family, after getting the Writ of Possession, noted they would trigger all other necessary legal regimes to undertake the demolition of illegal structures on the land.
