Former Chairman of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and Ghana’s High Commissioner to Canada has lambasted police officers on duty for what he claimed was their propensity to do things to bring governments into disrepute and threatened the officers with dismissal, the Chronicle reports in Accra.
Mr. Odoi-Sykes with his wife had stormed the Osu district headquarters of the Police Service to demand the whereabouts of his foreman, one Michael Ayivi, who had earlier been invited by the police over a disputed property development at Osu Ako Adjei, a suburb of Accra.
“Chronicle gathered that when the NPP guru arrived at the police station, he stormed into the charge office and angrily demanded that Ayivi be released onto him.”
Sources say the station officer, Inspector Danquah, tried to explain things to him, but the diplomat would not listen. “He rushed out to the counter and demanded to have a look at the cells to find out if the police had Ayivi there. Told that Ayivi was with the DSP in his office, the furious diplomat dashed to the police chief’s office to confront him.”
Chronicle reports say the High Commissioner then rained insults on the police in the most-foul language amidst threats of dismissal for entertaining the complaints of one Mr. S.F.A. Torgbor, a rival claimant to the disputed land. The paper however did not mention the foul language used by Mr. Odoi-Sykes.
When contacted, Mr. Odoi-Sykes admitted storming the police station, but denied insulting them. He said he only told the police: “This is the way you operate and bring government to ridicule,” the paper quotes him as saying.
According to him, on the day in question (Tuesday 18th September), he learnt that the police had come to pick up one of his workers, who were working on a land belonging to his mother-in-law, Madam Elizabeth Glover, to their station.
He rushed to the station to find out the reason for the arrest and on reaching there, he expected to see his worker at the charge office, and on not seeing him there, he demanded his whereabouts.
“The officer told me Ayivi had been released a long time ago, but I did not believe him, as I had just come from the site, if he was there, I would have seen him.”
He told the paper that it was at this point that he lost his cool and insisted on his demand, admitting, “my voice went a bit too high.”
Asked whether he had been served with a writ from the High Court, seeking among other things an order interlocutory injunction restraining him and others from entering the plot until the hearing and determination of the suit, Odoi-Sykes answered in the affirmative, but explained that he was served with the order only after Tuesday’s incident.
Chronicle says its instigations revealed that long before the NPP came to power, Odoi-Sykes, immediate past chairman of the party, acting as lawyer for his mother-in-law, had been manoeuvring to encroach on Mr. Torgbor’s land without success.
Chronicle gathered that on the investigation of the NPP guru on August 10, this year, the Chief Executive of the Lands Commission wrote to the 80-year-old Torgbor, the rightful owner of the land, according to documents available to the paper, giving him 30 days to show proof of his readiness to develop the plot or forfeit it.
Meantime, Odoi-Sykes had already fenced the plot with wooden structures within two weeks of the expiry of the land commission’s ultimatum to Torgbor, the NPP former chairman started erecting a permanent concrete wall around the plot to replace the wooden one he originally erected.
Chronicle learnt that not even the pre-emptive legal move by Torgbor’s lawyer in filing a suit against Odoi-Sykes could deter him.
“We know with his party’s victory, he appeared to have decided to use his influence to legitimise his illegal acts,” Samuel Torgbor, a son of the landowner, told the Chronicle.
According to the son, on September 18, this year, they made an official complaint to the Osu police concerning the unauthorised and irregular development on their land by Odoi-Sykes. He said they provided the necessary land title supporting documents on the lease from the Lands Commission to the police.
On the strength of this documentary evidence, he said the police moved to caution against the development of the property development. The police also advised that in view of the pending suit over the land, it was necessary for both parties to exercise restraint and desist from developing the land until the final determination of the case.
“But Odoi-Sykes infuriated by this admonition, rather threatened to use his influence to get the policemen dismissed, charging them with bribery,” Samuel said.
