La Stool land dispute: Call military to order, don’t blame us if our people revolt - Traditional Council

A delegation from the La traditional council has appealed to President Akufo-Addo to call the Military High Command to order, following a near confrontation between the traditional authority and some military men on Friday, 12 March 2020 at Tse-Addo in the Greater Accra region.

The scuffle occurred as a result of claims of encroachment on a 275-acre stool land which is yet to be delineated.

Consensus was reached by a tripartite committee set up in December 2020 under the auspices of the Chief of Staff to retrieve 225 acres for the traditional council while a buffer is created along the military cemetery enclave around the Headquarters of the Ghana armed forces at Burma camp with the remaining 50 acres.

This, the committee believed, will lay the protracted land dispute to rest.

However, even before the directives from Jubilee house was enforced, some unknown developers were spotted within the embargoed area, occassionally clearing the area for unknown reasons. The situation prompted a snap check by a delegation from the La Traditional council which stormed the area to halt the activities.

King maker of the La Traditional council, Nii Ajdei Koofeh IV, who spoke on behalf of the elders noted that, “our youth went to meet the executive secretary of the president, and then he assured us that you will see to it that things will be done well and that they will call the military to order, but they are still working. So today we came here to look at what is actually happening after our attention was drawn to what was happening here yesterday. We are coming to see for ourselves what is happening today”.

The leader of the delegation who expressed surprise at the alleged activities by the military sent a distress message to President Akuffo Addo to order the military to show good faith to arrangements set in place by the tripartite committee.

“We have come a long way. And as I said, we are law abiding citizens. We've given our due for national development and we don't think we should be mistreated. So, we are telling the president to attach sense of urgency to this issue because we are leaders of the town and we shouldn't let those that we are leading lose hope in us”. He further explained that the area under dispute only forms a minute portion of other outstanding land issues to be resolve by the central government “and we are calling on the president to act now because when the people of La rise, we, the leaders will have little to do”.

The group is scheduled to meet the Chief of Staff within the week for further dialogue on the matter since an engagement between the delegation and some high officials from the Ghana armed forces on site did not yield desirable results .