DAVID APENU VS ABLA AKAKPO & JANET SEMENYA & ELIZABETH AKAKPO
2024
HIGH COURT
GHANA
CORAM
- JUSTICE GEORGE BUADI J.
Areas of Law
- Property and Real Estate Law
- Equity and Trusts
- Contract Law
- Evidence Law
2024
HIGH COURT
GHANA
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The case involves a land ownership dispute between the plaintiff and the defendants, who are family members of the late Kwaku Akpakpo. After selling five plots of land to solve financial problems, the plaintiff faced claims of ownership from the defendants. A CHRAJ-brokered agreement stipulated that the plaintiff should pay GH¢50,000 for the plots, but he failed to pay the full amount by the deadline. The court held that the plaintiff had no title to the land due to the breach of the agreement and upheld the defendants' counterclaim, granting them ownership of the land and ordering the plaintiff to be refunded the money paid so far.
1 Introduction On 8 February 2019, the plaintiff commenced this suit against the Defendants herein for the following reliefs: a Perpetual injunction restraining defendants their agents, assigns, privies, [and] any person claiming through them from having any dealing with the land in question since same have already been sold to the Plaintiff by then b An order directed at the Defendants that since they have sold the land to the Plaintiff per the agreement reached at the office of CHRAJ they can only make demand for their money from the plaintiff but cannot take back the land in question.
c Any other order this Honourable Court may deem fit.
2. 0 Parties’ statement of case 2. 1 Plaintiff’s case The plaintiff is a drinking bar operator and a farmer resident at Viepe Tokor, whilst the Defendants are children of the late Kwaku Akpakpo.
The plaintiff claims to have grown to meet his grandfather Adawuso Apenu who was farming on a piece of land at Viepe-Tokor for about five decades.
Plaintiff contends that after the death of Adawuso Apenu, his father Gameli Apenu who he used to follow to their farm on the land took over the cultivation of the land in question after the demise of Gameli Apenu.
The plaintiff’s case is that from the period of his grandfather through his father and to his lifetime, they have never paid any royalty to any person or a group of persons to suggest that the land did not belong to his grandfather Adawuso Apenu.
The plaintiff avers that somewhere in 2008, he got into a financial difficulty so he sold five (5) building plots with each plot measuring 100×100 feet from the large piece of the said land to enable him to solve that financial problem.
Soon after the sale, the defendants surfaced to claim ownership of the land.
Their claim was supported by the plaintiff’s paternal uncles 1 who testified that the land belonged to the defendants’ grandfather.
The dispute arising therefrom was resolved peacefully at the Denu office of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) which held that the land did not belong to the plaintiff but rather to the defendants and pleaded with the defendants to agree to sell the said five plots to the plaintiff.
The defendants accepted the pleas and indeed sold the said plots to the plaintiff for a total sum of GH¢50, 000 at GH¢10, 000 per plot.
The plaintiff made a down payment of GH¢10. 000 on the day 13 February 2018 and a further GH¢7, 000 on 18 October 2018 with a promise to