Do not send investors away with litigated lands – Akufo-Addo tells Lands Commission

The president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has asked the Lands Commission to ensure that they do not deter investors from pumping money into the country by approving the sale of litigated lands to them.

The president underscored that the country lose huge sums of money, and productive ventures that brings numerous employment opportunities to Ghanaians when investors acquire lands only to find out that they are subjects of prolong ownership litigation.

At a swearing in ceremony of the reconstituted board of the commission in Accra on Wednesday, September 1, President Akufo-Addo said the country’s quest to transform the economy to bring about the much-needed development and prosperity required effective land administration.

He noted that “investors will be frightened away if they spend good money to acquire land as a major tool for production only to realise that what they acquired is litigation that span years and sometimes decades.”

He then charged the commission to make sure that such a situation within the land administration system stops immediately.

The president also warned public institutions to desist from dealing in the granting or allocation of public lands without express approval from him through the appropriate government agency.

He emphasised, that per the dictates of the Constitution, all public lands were vested only in the president and managed by the Lands Commission, and cautioned that any situation that ran contrary to that legal provision would not be entertained.

“Public lands allocated to government institutions, therefore, remain public lands, vested in the president and managed by the commission… Indeed, the new Land Act prohibits the grant of any interest in public land, other than use rights, to any public institution.

“No public institution should thus deal in, grant or allocate any land, without the express approval of the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, acting on my instructions. The days when public lands are literally dissipated without regard for the public interest are over,” he stated.

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Leverage on technology to fix land administration challenges

The president added that it was regrettable that despite the various intervention by successive governments, most of the challenges in our land administration still persist.

This includes dishonest sale of lands, poor record keeping at the lands commission, encroachment on public lands, and the fraudulent registration of lands.

He was puzzled that issues such as the registration of same parcel of land in the names of different people, mysteriously disappearance of land documents, and long years of registering of lands continued to persist in the age of technology.

Nana Akufo-Addo, therefore, urged the new board to prioritise the digitisation of the operations of the commission, noting that digitisation is the fastest route the commission could use to achieve the much-needed reforms.

“As you take office, one of the things you must pursue aggressively is the digitisation of the records of the Lands Commission. Most of the reforms needed to build an efficient land administration may be within our reach if we are about to move away from manual registration to digital registration.

You must therefore work assiduously to ensure that the digitisation programme works. Our target is to ensure that the registration takes a maximum of one month and I dare say, the Ghanaian people will assess the success of your tenure by how far this objective is attained,” the president accentuated.

Chairman’s response

Responding to the issues raised by the president, the board chair, Alex Nii Kweite Quaynor, assured that the commission would do all within their power to improve land administration in the country, as they would be guided by reform.

He noted that, “the reform requires changes at various levels of the operations of the Commission. Members of the Board of the Commission sworn into office have the knowledge and expertise required to carry out the planned reforms and are committed to doing so satisfactorily.”