Nkonya Chiefs Berate DCE
The Paramount Queenmother of the Nkonya traditional area, Nana Otubea II, has accused the Biakoye District Chief Executive (DCE), Madam Comfort Atta, and the assembly of deliberately robbing the state of millions of cedis, and also undermining the legal provision that establishes the assembly.
According to Nana Otubea, the Nkonya Traditional Council had provided ten hectares of land free of charge to the Biakoye Assembly for the building of a permanent assembly hall complex at Nkonya-Ahenkro on November 29, 2017.
But, to the surprise of the members of the Traditional Council, Nana Otubea continued, DCE Comfort Atta again wrote a letter to the council asking for land to build an assembly hall complex.
The Paramount Chief of Nkonya, Nana Okotor Kofi III, upon receipt of the letter from the DCE, according to the Queenmother, replied her on December 15, 2017, and reminded her of the ten hectares of land the Traditional Council had given out free of charge for the purpose of building an assembly complex, which would include bungalows for workers of the assembly.
Nana Otubea, who was addressing a news conference at Nkonya-Ahenkro, said the DCE, Madam Atta, grossly disrespected the Paramount Chief and the Traditional Council, and used millions of government money to purchase 24,000 hectares square of land at Nkonya-Kadjebi for the same purpose of building an assembly complex.
She further told the media that all indigenes farming on the land who donated to the assembly were asked to harvest their crops and leave the land for the intended purpose.
The order, according to her, was obeyed by the farmers.
She regretted that after the traditional authorities had done all these to support the assembly, the DCE, without consultation, went and bought another land at Nkonya-Kadjebi at a huge cost to the government, to construct the assembly hall and offices for the new assembly.
Nana Otubea said apart from showing gross disrespect to the chiefs, the DCE had also violated the law that establishes the Biakoye District Assembly.
According to her, the LI establishing the assembly clearly states that the capital should be sited at Nkonya Ahenkro, but the DCE, of her own volition, moved the capital to Nkonya-Kadjebi.
The Queenmother vowed to institute legal action against the DCE as a person, and the district assembly as an entity, for violating the laws of the country.
She also accused the DCE of corruption, based on the action she had taken to buy new land, when one had already been given to the assembly.
She said President Akufo-Addo is ferociously fighting against corruption, but some of his appointees at the lower level are doing otherwise.
She also accused the DCE of bringing in security people to disrupt her press conference. “It is sad that when government institutions and personnel are accused of corrupt practices, they quickly go to contract state security agencies like the police and military to disrupt programmes meant to expose them.
“You see, if my people had not listened to me, the bad name of Nkonya would have been spread again, as some security persons tried to heckle me,” she said.
Several calls, including a text message, sent to Madam Comfort Atta by this reporter to hear her side of the story, were not answered.