INVESTORS IN LANDED PROPERTY IN GHANA, BEWARE!!! - PART III

In 1998, I paid US$2,500 for my first plot of land in the Ablekuma area even as an undergraduate attending University of Cape Coast. Indentures and all other necessary documents covering the land were provided. I was advised by the seller to start “a small” project on the plot, so I built a structure which encompassed a chamber and hall on it. But in no time, a second owner emerged and pulled my structure down. The police could not help. You may recall it was around the same time that the police lost one of their own, Kwaku Ninja, and had no clue what was going on, or were apprehensive to venture into that neighborhood. The man who sold the land to me, Alhaji Bubba, was finally attacked and clubbed to death by others he must have duped using same method. Prior to his death and right after my structure was pulled down I tried to recover my money from him. I was able to retrieve just about US$1000 before his death.

In 2005, on the recommendation of a cousin, I again paid £3000 to another frontline man for a chief for a plot of land at Bortiano, a suburb of Accra. This time, I took the trouble to conduct a search at the Lands Registry after having being coerced by employees of the Department to pay advance handling fees without which nothing could be done. Initially, I resisted paying these unauthorized fees and complained. Further investigation detailed the institutional corruption of collecting these illegal advance processing fees without which nothing could be done. The results of the search at the Lands Registry indicated the land was free. The demand for illegal advanced fee payments alerted me to do things to protect my interest. As a result, I kept a recorder in my pocket, unbeknownst to those involved in the transaction and recorded every process of the transaction. Consequently, upon purchase and receipt of the indenture, again, I was asked by the middleman to erect a structure on the said plot. Assured that the land was free upon getting my indenture, I erected a storefront property on the land and left for London, United Kingdom. On my return from London, someone had gone to erect a wall around the whole plot.

I left for England to complete a school project I was working on there, believing that I had finally been able to acquire a parcel of land. By the time I returned to Ghana in a span of one year, someone had gone to fence the land including the single room that I raised on it at the admonishing of the middleman. I was highly agitated, so I placed a call to him. He knew my number and would not pick up the call. I knew he sensed trouble or was aware of the trouble but believed I would not be back in a long time. I quickly bought another card and called this man with it. Lo and behold, he picked up the call this time. After I had narrated my nightmare to him, he arranged a meeting which never was. After attempts to get him proved futile, I decided to involve the police.

At the police headquarters where a unit had been set up to deal with issues of the sort including visa racketeering cases, I realized that I was not alone. There were others who were also hoodwinked into parting with huge sums of money by this man and the likes of him under the pretext of selling parcels of land to them. There was a case that dwarfed mine in many ways and almost broke my heart. A lady who worked for the defunct Ghana Airways was in the middle of this saga. She had facilitated the buying of a large acreage of land as a liaison between a German investor on the one hand and this unscrupulous man and the chiefs on the other hand. The amount involved in this transaction was a whooping US$400 000 (four hundred thousand American dollars).

Both the investor and his liaison were completely distraught, frustrated, and disappointed by the inability of the law to bite these criminals who had taken advantage of them. The dawdling process in dealing with these criminals, I understand, offers the police who are dealing with the cases the opportunity to also extort money from the victims who must be going through agonizing experiences. Although I cannot tell how this particular case was finally concluded, but there is no doubt that apart from the man hours lost to the investor, he would also have lost not less than 20% of his US$400 000.

In my own case, I returned to the land administration unit to confront the lady who, from all indications, knew about the activities of this middleman, and knew the land in question was already in the name of someone else, but went ahead to process it in my name for the pittance she would get from this crook. When I confronted her on the issue, she flared up denying any involvement. She did not know that I had recorded all our conversations in which she was a part since we started the transaction. When I played part of the recording to her and threatened her with legal action, she started pleading with me to forgive her because she did not know what the crook was up to.

The agonizing part of these experiences is that you either lose your total investment or by the time you are able to receive refund if you are fortunate, the cedi must have depreciated and you lose the real value of money. Besides that, the police must have also made a fortune from your predicament. So indeed, the police are not in a hurry in any way to ensure that these unscrupulous elements within our society are kept away from unsuspecting individuals who fall victim to them every now and then. Without a doubt, robbing hardworking individuals under the pretext of selling land to them has become a lucrative business and the police are beneficiaries.

Nigeria is known to have been experiencing the worst form of this phenomenon, where a parcel of land may be sold to as many as five or more people even with the connivance of those mandated in the state land administration institutions to ensure things are done properly. In a recent move by the Kenya government to correct some of the worst forms of multiple sales of land and the use of land to bilk unsuspecting individuals of their hard earned savings, a cap has been placed on how much land one person could acquire in Kenya. But whether that policy is able to abate the problem is yet to be seen. But in policy terms, Kenya, many years after independence, has just now attempted to replicate what Greece had achieved between 131 – 121 BC with regard to land administration.

While I think it is an attempt at ameliorating the problem, it misses the main issues involved.

The effects of this situation is directly translated into shortage of housing and its corollary high rents in Accra and other major towns and cities, as people are afraid to invest their hard earned savings in projects they fear might end up being demolished by land guards or they might end up being swindled by conmen parading as middlemen for chiefs and elders of bogus traditional institutions. The acute housing problem facing Accra and other major cities in the country will continue until a solution is found to this problem.

At the infrastructural level, a critical look at the infrastructure development of Accra reveals a very sorry state of unplanned execution of buildings in water ways, raising of edifices in places earmarked for the building of social amenities, and the haphazard nature in which these structures are sprouting in Accra and all the major cities around the country. One is sometimes tempted to ask if we really know what is beautiful. Some old neighborhoods in the capital and other major cities in the country already have overwhelming signs of improper planning and haphazard execution of buildings with consequences that will be there for generations. With this development in mind, one would have thought that plans for newly developing suburbs in the capital and elsewhere around the country would follow some laid down plan, but a trip to most of the newly developing neighborhoods within Accra and all the major cities in the country reveals developers are still not heeding the call for order in the execution of buildings, as a result of the confusion in land administration in the country.

In 1998, the then Ghana Water and Sewerage Corporation could not account for well over 40% of the water it produced as a result of waste and theft of water from various points in and around the city. A reputable banking institution in Ghana revealed that it is not able to grant loans to people because they have no traceable addresses to which they can locate them in case they default payment. Only heavens know how much power is tapped illegally from the lines of electricity providers in the country to locations that cannot be billed.

By now, it should be clear that when we miss the basics of development, we live to pay the price in the long-run and in no small way. When one looks at some of the breathtaking architectural designs of some of the great cities around the world today, it is uncomplimentary to us, as a people, to point out that some of these cities are in countries which were once on the same development pedestal with Ghana some 40 years ago. It is clear that we have failed to inject basic order in the things we do, as a people.

Assuming houses were well planned, the land properly demarcated and houses well numbered and addressed, the huge economic potentials in the postal services, which is the economic mainstay for many people in the developed countries, could be tapped to create thousands of jobs for the teeming number of our unemployed SSS and university graduates and drop-outs who are braving the Sahara desert in their quest to enter Europe to make a better life. After all, I have seen many Master's holders and PhD holders do the same jobs or even more lower ones like cleaning and emptying the bin in North America and Europe. The distribution of mails and other forms of door-to-door delivery services are huge employers in Europe and elsewhere. So if there is a way to create a self-sustaining job for high school leavers who cannot find jobs because either their skills are irrelevant to the market or they are yet to acquire skills that would match the requirements of today's highly competitive job market or there are simply no jobs, why not?

Even Zimbabwe, where land redistribution has sparked a political crisis, for the most part, is still a very well organized country with respect to address systems and identification for security and other purposes. I recalled an incident in Zimbabwe in 1997 when I arrived there. After making my way through immigration checks and coming out of the arrival hall, I called a cab and gave the driver my destination address. Without hesitation he took off. I was to learn later that Harare, and the whole country for the most part, was a well-planned city with houses well laid out with house numbers. We drove for about 30 minutes to 91 Thaine Building on Mugabe Road. I nearly created a scene when it was time to pay for the service of the cab driver. He demanded Zim $36.00. And as normally the case in Accra, I offered to pay him Zim $20.00. Pointing to the meter on the dashboard which read Zim$36.00, he inquired from me if I was sane. I did not have to be told; I realized the tradition was quite different from what prevailed in my country till this day. I dipped my hand in my waist bag and gave him a US5.00 note which he accepted, thanked me, and took off. The US dollar to the Zimbabwean dollar, on my arrival on the 4th of October 1997, was 10 Zimbabwean dollars to 1 US dollar, so he was making an extra Zim $14 for my inability to give him Zimbabwean dollars.

The point is that in Ghana, even in 2010, there is nothing like a metered taxi. When you pick a cab, it is how best you can argue and haggle with the cab driver. So first time visitors who do not have any idea how it works are easily ripped off. The taxi driver might initially charge you four or five times the fare. It is your duty to compute the distances you have traveled by some kind of conjecture. So to avoid any fracas with cabby drivers, you must ensure you bargain the fare before you take off, or you would have a headstrong cab driver who would make a fortune out of you, once you are already at the destination.

Who says it cannot be done? If private car owners have the resources to buy cars for a cab, they equally must be resourceful enough to fit in their cabs a meter. If cabby owners, as an excuse, complain of resources to fit these meters in their cabs, this is where a proactive government, interested in improving the little things that would make life bearable to its citizens, comes in with soft financing schemes to support these individuals who would repay over a specified period of time. When these facilities are made available and cabby drivers do not still comply, this is where the law enforcement officers step in to clampdown on offenders.

But the basis on which all these initiatives can be effectively implemented have been left out of the equation from the word go - national identification cards and well plotted address system. So in the current pandemonium, banks, afraid of the insecurity for their loans as a result of individuals not having traceable addresses, add all the risk in determining their chargeable interest. In so doing, entrepreneurs transfer these high interest rates to the consumer. The consumer looks for alternatives which are cheaper and durable and turns to the foreign products. Two or three years down the line, the local company folds up with all the repercussions for the entrepreneur, employees, and dependents of individuals who might have been connected to that industry in one way or the other.

Prosper Yao Tsikata