Nana Anku Dododja Didieye III, Odikro (chief) of Abomasarefo, who is in court for allegedly forging a colonial document, is to reappear before a Koforidua High Court, presided over by Justice Henry A. Kwofie, to open his defense on October 30.
This was after the Prosecuting State Attorney, Mr Fredrick Nawurah, presented his last witness to the court, which sat on Tuesday and Wednesday, to give his side of evidence concerning the case.
Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), Godfred Yaw Adu, the witness, a Chief Investigator of the Ghana Police Service, tendered the evidences he gathered during his investigations on the case since 2001 to the court.
He tendered a horn of an animal, which was said to be part of the Abomasarefo shrine.
ASP Adu also tendered in some documents he found during his investigations, which were alleged to contain the handwritings of Nana Didieye.
According to him, he handed over those documents to the Police Forensic Laboratory in 2001 for forensic testing to ascertain if Nana Didieye could have authored the said colonial document.
He confirmed when he was cross-examined by Mr Dan Afari-Yeboah, counsel for the accused, that the report from the Police forensic laboratory, which was signed by Alhaji Bukari Yakubu, indicated that Nana Didieye might have authored the said colonial document.
The court adjourned proceedings until October 30, when Nana Didieye would be expected to open his defense on the case.
The said colonial document titled: “Report on Enquiry into Akwamus and Kwahus Land Dispute, 1845” is said to have been forged by Nana Didieye.
The contention also is that it had not been in the National Archives since 1845 as was being indicated.
According to reports, between 1989 and 1990, Nana Didieye had visited the National Archives severally, obtaining certain historical documents of the Gold Coast from which he compiled the said ‘colonial’ document.
The reports say he later presented it to the National Archives claiming it was a ‘colonial’ document prepared by certain Major Cochan of the Gold Coast regiment.
According to him, he found that ‘colonial’ document in a horn of an animal at a shrine in Abomasarefo which he thought would be of interest to the archives.
A portion of the document is alleged to contain a receipt indicating that Abomasarefo and its environs were bought by Nana Didieye’s great-grandfather, Kwaku Dedeayie, alias ‘Bareyo’ from the Akwamus in 1845 for 250 pounds sterling.
The reports continued that Nana Didieye later went back to the archives and obtained an authenticated copy of the document he had presented and petitioned the Kwahu Traditional Council in 1991 claiming the Abomasarefo land from the Bukuruwa stool.
So far, Mr Confidence Kodzo Gadzekpo, a former Chief Archivist at the then National Archives, has appeared as the first witness in court to testify that the accused brought the said ‘colonial’ document to be stored in the archives for which, knowing it was not a colonial document, filed it as “Special Collections.”
The second witness, Alhaji Bukari Yakubu, a documents examiner, at the Ghana Police Laboratory Investigation Unit, also disclosed that after examining the supposed colonial document, he identified many characteristics, which showed that Nana Didieye might have authored the document.
Kwame Didieye, 77-year-old cousin of the accused, brought in as third witness, indicated that he never saw the said document, but was rather told by Nana’s lawyer, Mr Afari-Yeboah, to give a false testimony in 2006 that he saw the ‘colonial’ document falling from a horn of an animal to let the court believe its authenticity.
Now ASP Adu, the last witness, had tendered his facts, including a horn, believed to be the vessel which the colonial document was said to have fallen from.
