Court restrains Judicial Committee from sitting

A Tarkwa High Court on Tuesday, July 29 issued an order of prohibition to restrain the Judicial Committee of the Wassa Fiase Traditional Council and President of the Council, Osagyefo Kwamina Enimil, from re-sitting on the Essousu chieftancy dispute.

According to the court, the order had become necessary because none of the feuding factions had appealed against a ruling given by the Committee on the case to warrant fresh hearing.

It maintained that the October 14, 1997 ruling which among other things, clearly stated that there was no way members of the Agona Number One family who claim to be part of the Essousu royal lineage, could ascend the throne, still holds and that the Committee could never open the case for re-hearing without an appeal by either of the factions.

At the court's sitting, the presiding judge, Justice F.K. Opoku, stressed that the entire Agona Number One family are forever stuck with the ruling of the Judicial Committee and that the long-standing dispute in the community should end.

Justice Opoku , who had in April last year expressed similar sentiment in his ruling  when the case was brought before his court, asked the Judicial Committee to always show a copy of the ruling to whoever approaches it for re-hearing. 

After acquitting and discharging Osagyefo for contempt of court charge during the sitting, the judge cautioned that the court would in future not spare any member of the Traditional Council who flouted its orders.

The Essouso Divisional area a few years back hit the headlines  following the death of its former chief, Nana Kodwo Anomako, whose body remained at the morgue  a couple of years due to inability of the royal family to install a new chief for the people. Customarily, it is the obligation of the new chief to perform the burial and final funeral rites of his predecessor.

The undue delay in the performance of the late chief's funeral compelled the royal family, led by Ebusuapanyin Kofi Sarfo, to take the bull by the horn by installing a fifty-two-year old educationist as the new chief under the stool name Nana Kodwo Atobrah 11. 

The Agona Number One family members who also maintained that it was their turn to select the next chief from their line, protested against the installation by cutting the whole community from the rest of the traditional area. But for a swift intervention by the  security agencies, a different story would have been told.