Desolation at Adjei Kojo

By: Benjamin Xornam Glover / Daily Graphic / Ghana | Friday, 24 January 2014

Sitting uncomfortably on a stool under a neem tree on the land that used to accommodate their house, Rosemary Perimah watched over what the family could salvage. With eyes filled with tears, she gazed at the rubbles of their demolished house in the hope that the hand of the clock could be turned back so she could regain her property. Rosemary and others at Promiseland and Solomon City, suburbs of Adjei Kojo near Ashaiman, are, obviously, yet to come to terms with the reality that their houses were demolished on January 22 and 23, 2014 by the task force from the Tema Development Corporation (TDC), with the demolishing exercise still ongoing at the time the Daily Graphic visited the site. She, like the hundreds of residents in the affected area, slept in the open overnight after the task force razed down every building in sight on the parcel of land which is part of the 63-square miles area belonging to the TDC. Rosemary told the Daily Graphic that her husband, a policeman, received a call on Thursday, informing him that members of the task force were pulling down their house. She said when his husband rushed to the area, the team had carried out the exercise and destroyed every item in the house, leaving them homeless and stranded. “If you look at the present economic condition in the country, it is very painful for someone to toil and lay hands on money to put up some small structure, only for it to be brought down this way,” Rosemary said, adding that they had documents attesting to the fact that they bought the land legally from the chiefs. Joseph Perimah, a nurse, said he was returning from work on Wednesday, when he received telephone calls that their house had been demolished, while household chattels were being thrown about recklessly. “My problem now is how to raise a substantial amount of money to relocate,” he said. The task force, together with a joint police and military team, has so far pulled down over 100 structures, displacing more than one thousand residents. Pain and anguish Struggling to narrate his experience, Lawrence Koranteng, who showed the Daily Graphic team the architectural drawings of his house, said: “I watched in anguish as the task force pulled down my house and bulldozed my belongings.” Mr Koranteng said he bought the land seven years ago from the traditional rulers, adding that he made follow-up visits to the offices of the TDC but was told there had never been any issue concerning the ownership of the land. He, therefore, proceeded to commence work on the structure two years ago and just when he had roofed it, the task force popped up to demolish it. “Since I started work on this project, officials of the TDC have been coming around but they don’t complain. We met both the chiefs and TDC officials to find out if there was a problem with the land, but we were assured that the land was safe to build on, only to be confronted with this havoc,” he said. Mr Issaka Sumaila, 72, lamented; “At my age, where do I start? I cannot run around the way I was doing some years back. This is where I have called home. This is where I always hoped to rest finally, but with this, I am confused. I leave everything to Allah. We are powerless and we can only commit the people who carried out this act into the hands of Allah.” Another resident, Mr Muniru Yussif, a member of staff at the Ashaiman Municipal Assembly, who lost his home in the exercise, questioned the rationale behind the exercise. “Where are we going to sleep, look at people’s properties all scattered over the place? Under the prevailing condition, what do they expect us to do, perhaps armed robbery. Maybe we should all go and acquire guns for robbery. If we succeed fine, if they kill us, the better,” he said. Political twist Some residents could not help it but point accusing fingers at the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), which they claimed had let them down. An aggrieved resident went to the extent of burning an NDC flag in protest at the exercise. Mr Mawudem Kumado, an executive member of the NDC in the area, said he would not blame anyone for their plight, but the government which they campaigned and voted for. “What is happening is very terrible. This land was acquired legally and under no circumstances can anyone refer to us as illegal occupants,” he added. In the midst of the confusion and anger, the Daily Graphic spotted an official of the Electricity Company of Ghana who had come around to distribute bills to occupants of the affected area. The said official was booed at and had to leave the scene in haste to avoid the wrath of the affected residents. Acquisition of land According to the TDC, the land in question was acquired in 1952 from the traditional authorities of Nungua, Tema and Kpone and leased to the TDC to develop a new township for Tema. Over the years, however, the TDC has lost thousands of acres of land to encroachers, while government land covering over 740 acres had also been taken over by encroachers. http://graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/16323-desolation-at-adjei-kojo.html http://graphic.com.gh/tma-pulls-down-homes-at-adjei-kojo.html?lang=en&page=4#category Writer’s email: Benjamin.glover@graphic.com.gh