The demolition of a building under construction at the Nigerian High Commission compound in Accra, Ghana, is an obvious case of lawlessness. The question is whether the primary acts of lawlessness were by the demolishers or the governments of Ghana and Nigeria.
By international convention, an embassy compound is a sovereign territory to the country that it represents. Not even the government of the host country has the right to breach that sovereignty. When, therefore, representatives of the Osu people of Ghana demolished the building, it was an egregious act of violence and violation of international law.
The question is whether dereliction of duty by the Ghanaian Lands Commission and the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs caused the frustration that fuelled the audacious destruction.
At its basic, this is a land dispute, something quite a few of us have entangled with. Just so readers have the basis to assess possible bias in this article, I must confess that I have myself been so entangled.
In 2014, I purchased for N850,000 a single-plot in my hometown, Bonny, to build a replacement for a home I had earlier sold. I had to sell the home because it was adjacent to the Deeper Life headquarters in the zone, where retreats and conventions were routine. With speakers blasting from the top of the building, it was difficult to converse, let alone sleep. So, I purchased the new plot at an undeveloped area with hopes for quieter times.
I was probably indulging in wishful thinking given the proliferation of pentecostalist churches—and now mosques—in Bonny. But I never got to find out. Though I had the plot surveyed and registered, representatives of an adjourning village showed up the day foundation work began and stopped it. The plot was communally owned, so the seller had no right to sell it, they said.
To not digress further from the point of this article, I’d leave the story there. Suffice to state that I still don’t have the land and the assembled building materials are still there.
There is much in common between this experience and the demolition in Accra. The one huge difference is that those who scuttled my attempt to build didn’t wait until the building was near completion.
This much is known about what transpired in Accra. First, the Nigerian High Commission did purchase the land at issue. However, years after, they never secured the necessary proofs of ownership.
For reasons that are open to plausible conjecture, the Ghanaian Lands Commission sat on the documents. And the Nigerian High Commission proceeded to build without the documents.
Meanwhile, leaders of the Osu community, where the plot is located, issued a cease and desist warning to the High Commission. They apparently knew that the High Commission didn’t have the documents of ownership. And so, in undertaking the lawless act of demolition, they were certain the law was on their side. And probably the law enforcement too.
And so, on the fateful day of June 19, they sent a bulldozer and armed men to the building and brazenly wrecked it.
Ghana’s former President John Mahama hinted at the basis of the brazenness in a tweet soon after the demolition. “It beats my imagination how such a violent and noisy destruction could occur without our security agents picking up the signals to avert the damage,” he was quoted as tweeting.
That may well be the crux of the matter. To make sense of this bizarre affair requires connecting the dots between the brazen act of lawlessness and the bureaucratic subterfuge of the Ghanaian Lands Commission.
The simple question is: Why did the Lands Commission sit on the documents after receiving due payment for the plot? Were they purposefully denying the embassy proof of ownership of the land? If so, why? Corruption? Collusion? Fear of affronting the Osu people?
While corruption cannot be ruled out, it is collusion and fear that lend themselves to plausible conjecture. Apparently, the Osu and the government of Ghana differ over who has the right to sell the land. In that case, the Osu might be laying claim to the money paid for the land. That might explain why they chose the recklessness of demolition over the rectitude of a lawsuit.
So, along with the building wreckers, it is officials of the Lands Commission who are on the hot seat. Samuel Attah-Mensah, the Chief Executive Officer of Ghana’s Citi FM and Citi TV, is among those calling for heads to roll there.
“The Lands Commission should be blamed in this whole game,” Attah-Mensah has been quoted as saying on Citi TV. “I think they should go to the Lands Commission and arrest those who renewed the mandate in 2019 because they are hiding there and watching unconcerned but they know what they have done.”
Derelict embassy
Even then, the decision of the Nigerian High Commission to proceed with the building without the necessary documents begs for explanation. The Ghanaian daily The Nation quotes Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister Geoffrey Onyeama as conceding bad judgement.
“It was clearly a mistake on our side,” Onyeama is quoted as saying. “(We) did not obtain a lease, following the allocation letter they got after paying for the plot of land, nor did we proceed to obtain a land title certificate and we didn’t even get a building permit for the new property.
“We would learn from that. But clearly, our documenting and record-keeping and processes would need to be sharpened.”
That is an understatement, even as diplomatic expressions go. Onyeama said also that those responsible for the egregious oversight couldn’t be held accountable because it happened 20 years ago.
Eviction notice
As it turns out, the demolition of the building is just another infraction involving Nigeria’s embassy buildings in Accra in the past year. The online operation GhanaWeb reported on January 2 that the Ghanaian government issued an eviction notice to the Nigerian High Commission in Accra last year for failure to renew its lease.
I couldn’t readily determine whether this was with regard to the same building just demolished. But according to GhanaWeb, Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Ghana, Olufemi Michael Abikoye, acknowledged receiving the letter dated Dec. 27. In it the High Commission was asked to vacate its diplomatic property at No.10 Barnes Road as it had been allocated to Amaco Microfinance Company Limited.
“Failure to comply within the stipulated time will lead to depositing the Mission’s belongings at the nearest Accra police station,” the letter warned.
According to GhanaWeb, Abikoye complained then that the reallocation was done “without recourse to the High Commission.” He said also in the statement that the “Nigerian Government is examining the situation and that an appropriate directive was being awaited.” And he expected “a mutual resolution of the matter.”
If we are talking of the same matter, apparently the violence of demolition interceded. In any case, what is certain is that the full story is yet to emerge and might never.
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