Mr Justice N. Y. B. Adade, retired Supreme Court Judge, on Friday described as anachronistic the administration of lands in the country and called for its reversion to the chiefs and the stools.
He said: "the provisions in the Constitution concerning lands have not helped much in a proper and easy understanding of our land administration in this country.
"On the contrary, they have compounded the confusion often experienced in this area by ordinary Ghanaians, even by some professionals".
Mr Justice Adade, who was giving a lecture on: "Agenda for reform on the Constitution: some policy considerations," described the Lands Commission's eating into the province of the Administrator of Stool Lands as an anachronism.
He said there were many "owners" of land in this country and that the Constitution never tasked the Land Commission to substantially take over any of the functions of any other agencies in land ownership and administration.
Mr Justice Adade, a former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice in the Second Republic said, "unfortunately, it is impossible to acquire land from any owner at all and process the document of title from execution to registration without somewhere, somehow, coming face to face with the Lands Commission".
He said the Administrator of Stool Lands was a successor to the colonial institution, which was to hold lands in trust of the people as the then illiterate chiefs dissipated stool funds.
He said the intention behind creating those trusts was laudable and expressive of responsible governance since Colonial Trustees transparently operated accounts of stool lands.
"Successive governments after independence have taken over the institution of the Administrator of Stool Lands and continue to operate it on obsolete and anachronistic grounds," he said that the Land Commission and the Administrator of Stool Lands were, "now acting as landlords of expired leases of stool lands, granted by the Colonial government".
Mr Justice Adade said this matter required immediate attention and resolution since "most stools do not even know if they have accounts at all much less how much they have in them.
"It will seem that the Administrator operates through the Lands Commission, which in turn pays the revenues into the consolidated fund, with all the attendant problems of retrieval."
Now that the chiefs were educated and surrounded with elite group, the lands must go back to the Stool Land Owners, who would manage it more efficiently on behalf of the people for development in the rural areas, which may go a long to help government in that direction.
