REPUBLIC v. VE TRADITIONAL COUNCIL; EX PARTE ATSU

JUDGMENT OF KINGSLEY-NYINAH J.

This is a cause in which the defendant-applicant (hereafter called the applicant) has sued for an order for certiorari on the following grounds:

(i) Want of jurisdiction;

(ii) Breach of natural justice; and

(iii) Bias of interest.

The order is sought against the Ve Traditional Council described as "Arbitrary Court of Togbe Delume VI of Ve Traditional Area," to quash its proceedings of 3 December 1966, in a matter which involved the applicant for certiorari as defendant, and the respondent herein as plaintiff.

Supporting his application for certiorari, the applicant (now deceased), swore to an affidavit, in paragraph (6) whereof he made the following averment:

"when the council met and proceeded to hear and determine the matter of difference between the plaintiff and myself, the council sat as a traditional council and therefore had no jurisdiction to entertain the matter despite the erroneous description of its deliberations as 'Arbitrary Court of Togbe Delume VI of Ve Traditional Area'."

In connection with this contention it becomes pertinent to look at section 15(1) of the Chieftaincy Act, 1961 (Act 81), which provides as follows:

[p.786]

"A Traditional Council shall have jurisdiction to hear and determine any cause or matter affecting chieftaincy which arises within its area, not being one to which .... a Paramount Chief is a party."

From the facts and the evidence before me, there can be no doubt at all, and I find as a fact, that the matter before the Ve Traditional Council was certainly not one that raised any constitutional issues which touched, affected or involved the plaintiff-respondent (hereafter called the respondent) or the defendant-applicant in his or their capacities as Togbewo. And it is clear, also, and I find, further, that the decision that court arrived at was one that affected the private personal interests, in land, of the parties whose dispute it had investigated and determined.

But section 15 of the Chieftaincy Act, 1961, notwithstanding, there is no law anywhere in any of our statutes which precludes either a traditional council vested with the power to inquire into matters affecting the election or installation of any person as a chief, or the claim of any person to be elected or installed as a chief, or any body of traditional chiefs and elders, from constituting itself, or themselves, into an arbitration and settling disputes that have arisen between members within its, or their are