A former judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Prof. Akua Kuenyehia has blamed the Ghanaian Judicial System for the challenges facing land ownership in the country.
According to the former ICC judge, even though legal processes have improved, some lawyers find shrewd ways of prolonging land disputes in order to siphon more money from their clients.
Prof. Kuenyehia said this Thursday while speaking at the 7th edition of Achimota Speaks, a monthly lecture series put together by old students of Achimota School to mark its 90th anniversary.
Addressing the gathering, she said “most often stool lands have no clearly defined boundaries leading to endless litigation among communities and that there are multiple contradictory judgements relating to the same pieces of land in this country and [that] our courts are also part of the problem.”
Again she said there are unnecessary delays in the registering process of lands thus creating a fertile ground for corruption “because everybody wants to accelerate their processes and are willing to pay and of course, whether you pay or not you still don’t get your land registered on time.”
On his part, the keynote speaker at the event, Justice Seth Twum said land conflicts have been a struggle for the rich and that it will continue to exist because of the country’s lack of planning.
“It doesn’t matter where the land is” he said “as long as people have strength in terms of money.”
Land cases he added are not getting fewer and that the last count he had from his own file indicated that people are getting more aggressive.“In Accra here, the land problem is not going to go away because we are not a very progressive nation in terms of planning.”
