Minister fights Police Chief

Joseph Nii Laryea Afotey- Agbo, Greater Accra Regional Minister, has directed a raging anger at the Dodowa District Police Commander for allegedly championing the activities of land guards and involving himself in chieftaincy issues at Apollonia in the Kpone-Katamanso District of the Greater Accra Region.

Superintendent Samuel Kwesi Ofori, the regional minister observed, “is creating fierce tension and unrest at Apollonia, and I will not rest until I see his quick exit from this region.

I will fight and fight until the powers-that-be throws him out of the Greater Accra Region.”

Calling for the head of the Dodowa district police boss, the minister said, “I have recommended to the President and the Chief of Staff for the removal of the Dodowa Police Commander because I cannot work with him. I want him out of this area because I cannot rely on him.”

Addressing the Regional House of Chiefs at Dodowa where he made his Christmas presentation to them, Nii Afotey-Agbo, also known as Lion, said he could not understand why the Dodowa District Police Commander would throw his weight behind some land guards who had so far sold out about 2,000 acres of land.

The criminal act, the Kpone-Katamanso Member of Parliament indicated, happened under the nose of the police commander whose security measures in the district had been suspect.

Speaking in Ga, the minister posited, “Who is Kwesi Ofori to challenge the legitimacy of the Apollonia Chief who has been gazetted by the National House of Chiefs? If he doesn’t know, Apollonia has a legitimate chief and that chief has oversight responsibility on all stool lands under his jurisdiction.”

He said Supt Ofori, as a district police boss, was not on top of issues in the area because he had no ideas and knowledge about chieftaincy and stool lands hence his ‘blindness’ in siding with illegalities.

He fumed, “If you, a police commander, have no vital information on the chiefs of your area and you don’t go to the rightful place to get the needed information to know which of your chiefs are gazetted, then you are not on top. Who is Kwesi Ofori to slap a bond on a gazetted chief?!”

The commander, Afotey-Agbo asserted, has a bad relationship with the chiefs and people of the district and so his immediate transfer from the area would calm tensions at Apollonia and the entire Dodowa district.

“Chieftaincy institutions have been strengthened and the commander needs to ‘use his head’ to know that except a gazetted chief, who is the custodian of all lands in his area, nobody can allocate any land to anybody,” the regional minister cautioned.

With the resolve to see the exit of the district police commander, the chiefs applauded the minister and unanimously pledged their support for him to flush out all land guards from the region.

He presented 15 bags of rice, five curtains of vegetable cooking oil and a bull to the Regional House of Chiefs for the Christmas celebration.