Committee on lands in Tamale presents report

A five-member fact-finding committee has stated that the way government land is managed and sold in the Tamale Metropolitan Area is counterproductive, widespread and alarming and could  lead to serious security breaches if not checked.

According to the committee set up to investigate the management and sale of lands in the Tamale metropolis, sales of land were done with impunity to an extent that even open spaces left around  the official bungalows, including those of the Northern Regional Commanders of the Ghana Prisons Service and Immigration Service, and plots lying adjacent to the prisons officers’ quarters had been sold to private developers, who are feverishly developing the lands without recourse to the law.

A Principal State Attorney in the Northern Region who was the Chairman of the committee, Mr Salia Abdul-Quddus, made this known when he presented the committee’s report to the Northern Regional Minister, who is also the Chairman of the  Regional Security Council (REGSEC), Alhaji Mohammed Muniru Limuna, at a REGSEC meeting in Tamale last Thursday. 

Volatile situation

According to Mr Abdul-Quddus, so serious was the issue that the committee had hesitated in making its findings public. He said it was, therefore, asking the chairman of REGSEC to study the report carefully and come up with recommendations that would stop the practice once and for all.  

He said during its work, the committee found that there were deep suspicions among the Town and Country Planning, the Lands Commission and chiefs. This, he said, had accounted for the land-grabbing situation, to the extent that even lands belonging to the government were not spared.

“The practice is so pervasive and widespread and so we plead that REGSEC should deliberate on it keenly before making its recommendations,” the chairman of the committee stated.

REGSEC

Alhaji Limuna, who received the report on behalf of REGSEC, commended the committee for the good work it had done. 

“I believe that the public is eager to know what the report entails but I urge all to exercise patience as REGSEC studies the report and comes out with its recommendations,” he said.

He observed that the committee did not intend to expose or humiliate anyone but rather to ensure that sanity prevailed insofar as management of lands in the metropolis was concerned. 

Background

The Northern Regional Minister, Alhaji Limuna, inaugurated the five-member fact-finding committee on January 7, 2015 with a mandate to look into allegations regarding poor management and irregular sale of government lands in the Tamale metropolis.

The committee was set up against the background of rising tensions and accusations over alleged illegal sales of government lands to private developers in the metropolis.

For its terms of reference, the committee was to ascertain the veracity of allegations over illegal sale of government lands, to determine the extent of the practice, recommend measures to deal with illegal sale of lands belonging to government and consider any other issue that may be of relevance in addressing the problem of land management in the region.