June 20, 2019
HIGH COURT
GHANA
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
Justice Barbara Tetteh-Charway of the High Court (Accra) determined a dispute over a 0.92-acre parcel at New Kwabenya involving the estate of the late Jama Ahele Zinabu and defendants claiming through Chief Nii Abbey Okanfra II. The administrators, royals of the Abbey We Division of the Odai Ntow family, showed their mother reduced virgin land into possession decades earlier, cultivated it, built on it, obtained a customary grant and a formal conveyance in 1994, and commenced title registration. Defendants asserted grants and a Land Title Certificate and relied on Suit No. IRL/165/10 to argue estoppel per rem judicatem. The court rejected the estoppel defence for want of the prior record of proceedings, found plaintiffs proved title on the balance of probabilities, entered judgment for declaration and possession, and awarded GH5,000 damages and GH10,000 costs.
The 1st Plaintiff commenced this action against the Defendants in her capacity as administrator of the estate of the late Jama Ahele Zinabu (deceased). According to the Plaintiffs, the late Jama Ahele Zinabu, died intestate on the 25th of September 2005 and on the 11th of June 2013, Letters of Administration of her Estate were granted to the Plaintiffs by the High Court Accra.
Plaintiffs’ claim that they are royals and members of the Abbey We Division of the Odai Ntow family from which chiefs are selected to occupy the Kwabenya Stool.
Plaintiffs say that the deceased, Jama Ahele Zinabu, was the daughter of the late Ahele Quarcoo and a niece of the then chief of Kwabenya, Ahele Quarshie.
During the reign of Ahele Quarshie, the deceased, by virtue of being a member of the royal family, and with the tacit approval of principal members of the said family, reduced into her possession a large tract of land by cultivating a farm.
The land in dispute falls within the said tract of land.
The Plaintiffs say that the deceased went into possession of this piece of land by cultivating various crops and also constructed a building on a section of the land in dispute.
Subsequently, her right to possession of the said land was confirmed by a customary grant.
It is the testimony of the Plaintiffs that the deceased submitted a smaller section of the large tract of land she possessed to the Land Title Registry Division of the Lands Commission for Title registration.
Plaintiffs further claim that sometime in 2012 a gang of thugs threatened to demolish the deceased’s building and ordered her to vacate her building for her own safety claiming that the Defendants had acquired the land from Nii Abbey Okanfra, the cousin of the deceased.
Again, in 2013, the Defendants threatened to demolish the deceased’s building claiming they had a court order to that effect.
According to the Plaintiffs, the said Nii Abbey Okanfra, who later succeeded his father Ahele Quarshie, as chief of Kwabenya, lived and worked at Tema and could not have acquired the land in dispute since their deceased mother was, at all material times, in possession of same.
It is Plaintiffs claim that neither the deceased nor they, the Plaintiffs, have been made party to any suit in relation to the disputed land in respect of which judgment has been given against the estate of the deceased.
Plaintiffs claim that if there is any such judgment then it must have been procured by fraud, mistake or against the rul