Government Will Not Sell Bungalow To Jake

The state bungalow Jakes wants to buy

The state bungalow Jakes wants to buy The government says it will not sell to Mr Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey the No 2 Mungo Street bungalow, a state property he occupied and later acquired while serving as a Minister of State in the Kufuor administration.

“In the supreme interest of the people of Ghana, and taking cognisance of the Supreme Court ruling in the matter of Mr Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey’s immoral acquisition of a state property he occupied as a Minister of State, Cabinet, as its sitting yesterday, decided not to sell the said property,” a press statement signed by the Minister of Information, Mr Fritz Baffour, said.

“The property thus continues to remain the property of the state,” it said.

According to the statement, Cabinet had also decided that “no political appointee should ever be allowed to engage in any such unacceptable transaction”.

Meanwhile, counsel for Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey, Nii Ayikoi Otoo, has told graphic.com.gh that the decision by Cabinet not to sell the property to Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey could lead to the removal of President J.E.A. Mills from office.

He stated that the ownership of the property was not in doubt because the lease of the property had already been given to Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey, who had satisfied all the conditions, which was affirmed by the Supreme Court, but stated that the decision by Cabinet not to release the property to Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey had rolled back the constitutional gains chalked up by the country since the inception of the Fourth Republic.

Nii Otoo, who quoted articles 25 (3), 2 (2) and (4) of the 1992 Constitution, said it was due to the experiences of interference and refusal by some Presidents in the history of the country that the drafters of the 1992 constitution ensured that such interference was not entertained.

He first quoted Article125 (3), which states, “The judicial power of Ghana shall be vested in the Judiciary, accordingly, neither the President nor Parliament nor any organ or agency of the President or Parliament shall have or be given final judicial power.”

Article 2 (2) also states, “The Supreme Court shall, for the purposes of a declaration under Clause (1) of this article, make such orders and give such directions as it may consider appropriate for giving effect, or enabling effect to be given, to the declaration so made,” while Article 2 (4) says that “failure to obey or carry out the terms of an order or direction made or given under Clause (2) of this article constitutes a high crime under this Constitution and shall, in the case of the President or the Vice-President, constitute a ground for removal from office under this Constitution”.

Nii Otoo explained that for the Cabinet, led by President Mills, to blatantly refuse to heed the order of the Supreme Court was taking the country back to the dark days.”

The Supreme Court, on Tuesday, dismissed an application by two deputy ministers that challenged the right of Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey to purchase the state bungalow in question.

The court held that the plaintiffs failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt the accusations of conflict of interest, cronyism and arbitrariness they had levelled against Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey.

Presided over by Mr Justice William Atuguba, the court was of the view that Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey did not acquire the said property as a minister but as a private citizen after he had resigned from public office.

In 2008, Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa and Dr Edward Omane Boamah, then private citizens but now Deputy ministers of Information and Sports, respectively, brought the action against Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey, who was then the Minister of Tourism and National Orientation, seeking a declaration from the court that he had no right to buy the bungalow, No 2 Mungo Street in the Ridge Residential Area, he was occupying at the time.

The plaintiffs had argued that the action of the respondent contravened articles 20 (5) and 20 (6) of the Constitution and smacked of cronyism and gross abuse of the discretionary powers of a public officer.

While Justices S.A. Brobbey, Baffoe Bonnie, Owusu Ansah, Rose Owusu, Sophia Adinyira and Jones Dotse formed the majority opinion, the remaining three — Justices Atuguba, Sophia Akuffo and Vida Akoto-Bamfo — presented dissenting opinions.

An Accra-based legal practitioner, Mr J. Opoku Adjei, giving his personal opinion on the issue, said if Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey had an agreement for a lease on the land, of which a price and terms have been agreed on, all he could do was to go to a court of competent jurisdiction for specific performance.

Mr Adjei, who made it clear that he had not read the judgement, added that if there was an agreement for a lease for Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey, the government could not turn around and refuse it.

He also added that those who had been arguing that the land was a government property acquired from the people of Accra and that it should have first been offered for sale to the original owners were not right.

That, he explained, was because the law stating that property of such nature should be offered for sale to the original owners first came into force in 1992 and thus did not refer to the land in question which was acquired during the colonial era.

graphic.com.gh