CHARLES J. A. ASHONG v. WILLIAM SARFO

My name is Daniel Lamptey. I live at Mamprobi in Accra. I know Charles Ashong (the plaintiff) in this case. He has given me power of attorney. I am therefore the attorney of the plaintiff. The power of attorney has been presented for stamping hence I cannot tender it today. Sometime in 1999 the plaintiff had a friend called Stephen who asked him to buy land for him. So plaintiff gave money to Stephen and Stephen bought the land for him. Plaintiff works at Cape-Coast and Stephen is in Accra. The land Stephen bought for plaintiff is at Afariwa Estate in Oyarifa. Stephen bought the land from one Shasha Yemoh, an agent of the elders of Oyarifa, the owners of the land . I do not know the name of the family of which Shasha Yemoh acted as an agent. After paying for the land, he was issued with a document and he went to the Lands Department to register it. After the registration, plaintiff started developing the land. He made the footings up to the foundation level and left it for some time. Since he was working in Cape-Coast he could not come to Accra every day to supervise the work. So he asked Stephen to supervise the work for him. Stephen did it up to the slab level and since money was not forthcoming he had to stop for sometime. Upon purchase of the land, plaintiff was issued with a site plan that shows the dimension of the land purchased. And Stephen erected corner pillars on the land. When the land was first entered there was no evidence of prior occupation. Few years later plaintiff came to Accra and went to the site to check what he had done with the intention of continuation. When he went there he saw some people on the site digging through his foundation. He asked them to stop and asked them who gave them the authority to work on the land. They actually did not mind him. Plaintiff reported the matter to Adenta police. Police came to the site and asked them to stop work and they stopped. They asked them to produce their document. A week or two later they brought their document to the police. We also submitted our document. I have with me a copy of the document we showed to the police. The document is tendered into evidence and same is marked as Exhibit ‘A’. Exhibit ‘A’ was the indenture issued to me when we bought the land. It was the defendant who had entered the land and digging the trench. The police commander asked the police in charge to conduct a search at the Lands Department and the search was conducted. Defendant did not disclose where he got th