The National Democratic Congress (NDC), as both a political party and the governing party, must remember that those who grant and withdraw political power are ordinary people with families, friends, and wider social ties, just like those they elect. They are the pot that brews power, the electoral force that gives political power life, and their pain, disappointment, joy, and hope all shape whether that power tastes sweet or bitter.

Moreover, it is worth emphasizing that there has never been an indefinite commitment of an electorate measured by a voter’s previous decision, for their loyalty is never permanent or guaranteed by past choices; their true decision remains private until election day, revealed only through the thumb, ticked ballot, or voting button.

Resetting Ghana should not mean allowing corrupt officials in the Ghana Police Service, National Security, the Lands Commission, or even individuals close to Jubilee House to exploit loopholes in a developing country by harassing legitimate property owners, demolishing their buildings, or seizing their assets. This concern has recently begun to take root in the minds of New Ogbojo residents.

The New Patriotic Party widely perceived as having members who greedily and ruthlessly seized national assets and converted them for personal gain. They allegedly legitimized these actions through the very institutions meant to prevent such abuse. Instead, those institutions became enablers of corruption, with corrupt officials operating behind a veil created by the inefficiency or complicity of the Police, National Security, the Lands Commission, and individuals alleged to have ties to Jubilee House.

Citizens, fed up with the NPP, placed their trust in the NDC’s clearly communicated “Resetting Ghana” agenda. The message resonated strongly with voters and even with those not yet of voting age, producing an unprecedented electoral outcome in Ghana’s history and leaving the NDC with no excuse not to correct past wrongs and improve what is already working.

Today, with about two years until the next election, the government has made visible progress in resetting the economy, earning public admiration. However, other serious and crucial areas appear to be faltering, gradually creating regret and resentment toward the NDC government’s handling of them. This may be due to some sectors not cracking down on the use of their names for openly exercising power with excessive display and impunity.

A syndicate appears to have illegally infiltrated the system to harass citizens, seize their properties, and transfer them to new owners or financiers who build wealth through front men. President Mahama’s warning that corrupt officials in his administration will not be spared reinforces this concern. Yet some weak officials seem to have been influenced by bad actors, including those from the previous government to continue these abuses through wider networks of front men.

Whatever has been promised the orchestrators of these shameful acts by the corrupt officials hiding in many public sectors, and some security services sectors, especially the Lands Commission, the Police, and National Security, appears palatable and mouthwatering enough to see those being used overtly engaging in such disgraceful acts with opulence as if the laws of the nation has suddenly been put in the reverse gear in those sectors.

The alleged syndicate finds it both profitable and acceptable to violate the rights of residents in some Accra suburbs with impunity. It is alleged that they search communities for properties, especially land, whether developed or undeveloped, that have not been registered with the Lands Commission. Using sophisticated survey equipment, they record the coordinates and, with the help of corrupt officials at the Lands Commission, register the land in their own names. In certain cases, even when the land has already been registered, they allegedly alter the records or re-register it in their names. This theft did not begin under the NDC; it is believed to have also been practiced by some NPP officials and foot soldiers during their time in power.

The citizenry did not expect such cruelty and harassment to continue under NDC. Unfortunately, they are beginning to question the might of their votes they believed was to save them from these acts of thievery, frustration, and harassment from politicians and their appendages.

Construction on land that does not rightfully belong to a person, such as government land or waterways, should understandably not be tolerated. However, when property owners-built homes on land that was legally leased from rightful sellers at the time of purchase, lived there, and maintained the land for many years, a later court judgment against previous landowners should not justify the immediate harassment, invasion of privacy, disruption of businesses, or demolition of those innocent buyers’ homes.

The institutions of Ghana not getting it right from the onset and still struggling with land ownership, administration and disputes leading to many questioning the viability of laws governing land acquisition must not be a punishment to hard working citizens who were industrious enough to invest in lands legitimately sold to them originally.

Politicians and Officials at the Lands Commission, the Police and National Security must be constantly reminded that if power has the tendency to quickly eject their conscience and sensibilities, they should at all times be guided by the understanding that that they are there to protect the interests of the citizenry and the nation, and not any syndicate, individual or group, including political parties.

The citizens must not be crying in the era of resetting Ghana about where to lay their heads when they have worked hard for so many years to acquire the same and only for feuding fashions’ dispute judgement to suddenly make them homeless or bankrupt.

A few moles and corrupt officials in the public services, such as the Lands Commission of Ghana, and the security services, including the Police and National Security must not be the cause of depression of the citizenry, for such inclinations breeds unrest in nations for bad actors to clinch on to destroy promising nations, and Ghana is not insulated against that.

Characters flaunting to be connected to the seat of government and those who indeed are somewhat connected to the seat of government but operating secretly and behind the scenes unknown to the formal structure to fuel corrupt activities and fan these types of harassment and indiscipline must be actively fished out, and shame.

A pattern is emerging in which court judgments overturn landownership, leaving ordinary citizens who have owned land, built homes, and lived in them for decades, ordered to leave or watch their houses demolished. These are not homes built on waterways or state lands, like those recently demolished in Accra and widely shown in mainstream and social media.

The people of New Ogbojo near Madina, a suburb of Accra the capital of Ghana in1995 witnessed the demolishing of about thirty-five houses occasioned by a land ownership dispute. The exercise took place because one Evans Kweku Tei then claimed ownership of the parcel of land carrying those thirty-five houses. The incident set in motion years of legal battle against him and caused uncertainties among residents of that enclave.

As the uncertainty deepened, residents remained hopeful that the legal system would deliver an amicable resolution quickly. Instead, the case dragged on, moving from one judge to another.

In the latter part of 2003, there was a loud call by the local residents of New Ogbojo on the then Ghana’s Chief Justice, His Lordship, Justice, George Kingsley Acquah who had just succeeded His Lordship Justice Edward Kwame Wiredu to intervene in that standing dispute that kept giving them sleepless nights.

In 2010, the Supreme Court of Ghana, presided over by Justice W. A. Atuguba, ruled in favor of the Anahor and Dzirase families as the allodial title holders of the land at Ogbojo. Mr. Evans Teye was a co-defendant in the case.

The ruling quickly brought the reflections of the past to aggressively surprise New Ogbojo residents and heightened the anxiety they had been living with over the years. Nonetheless there still existed some light smoke that kept rising from the fire set between a legal and customary land dispute between La Stool and the local Anahor and Dzirase families.

Today, New Ogbojo residents are being reminded and told the houses they toiled to build and lived in for decades and in many cases the tenants who have become their families must be vacated or lands they built on must be repurchased at an exorbitant amount that will take an average Ghanaian about another decade to raise considering the economic situation in Ghana that is currently gaining stability gradually with unemployment still being a challenge.

The decision has never been an executive decision and is still not. It is a judicial decision arrived at by the Apex court of Ghana.

However, the approach to the regularization of the court’s decision and titles is being done aggressively and poorly, with those harassing the residents of New Ogbojo allegedly suggesting they have the backing of Jubilee House and parading themselves as national security operatives with some of them mostly seen and known by residents as land guards.

On January 10, 2026, ‘The Herald’ reported an incident captioned “Armed men storm New Ogbojo, demolish buildings, assault residents.” A press statement signed by the community leader according to the publication quoted some residents to have said,

“We, the residents of New Ogbojo, are up in arms against the son of Mr. Evans Teye… who has this morning come with loaders and excavators to collapse our houses in the name of being the owner of these lands.”

Moreover, regularization arising from a court judgment must not be exercised in an inhumane or unregulated manner, especially at a time when Ghana is being described as undergoing a reset. Today, it is the residents of New Ogbojo; which community will suffer a similar fate next because of weak and ineffective laws?

New Ogbojo residents are beginning to ask whether the NPP managed the situation better than the NDC appears to be doing. The NPP is known for massaging problems rather than solving them, often postponing tough decisions. The NDC is not usually associated with that approach, but its silence over the plight of New Ogbojo residents is deafening, unless it, too, has inherited that habit.

The NDC government must quickly sit up and calm the situation, warn National security impersonators if they are not from National Security to desist from violent acts against New Ogbojo residents. They cannot afford to be silent or pretend not to be aware of the current trauma the people of New Ogbojo are currently going through. The people are not asking for cheques or favors. They are pleading for peace and their security and equally begging for leadership and amicable mediation between them and the landowners at high-level backed by some form of memorandum of understanding to ease the harassment. They want to be put on a path to regularize whatever the law prescribes in a manner that will not depress them, their families and community.

The government must demonstrate to the people of New Ogbojo that it is responding to their call for protection of their physical and mental well-being during this challenging time as citizens of Ghana. Is it a coincidence that they are being harassed and threatened with demolition and vacation of their properties unless they pay large sums of money at the same time when buildings on waterways are getting demolished in the capital and around them?

Those threatening their peace appear to be exploiting the ongoing demolitions of buildings and structures on waterways to avoid scrutiny, moving through the community on motorbikes and defacing buildings with paint. To the uninformed, the distinction may be difficult to see.

Residents must have reasonable terms and sufficient time through negotiations formally supervised by the appropriate authorities and backed by law. The process should be free from harassment, excessive costs, and payment demands designed to force them out of their homes or take their properties from them, as many New Ogbojo residents are now painfully expressing through fear, panic attacks, and depression. They deserve a fair and manageable payment plan for a predicament caused not only by them or those who sold them the land, but also by gaps in Ghana’s land acquisition laws and inadequate civic education.

This is where a listening government and member of parliament of the area quickly assemble all the parties involved to facilitate amicable resolution without raising tension, fear and panic among the citizenry, especially where most of them have minors and the vulnerable always exposed to this unfortunate spectacle of ‘lawlessness’ on the part of those who frequent residents to harass them, even to the point of alleged physical assaults and damage of belongings.

Their rights are being trampled upon and what many of them are beginning to allege and preach loudly is that it is the NDC government that is harassing them with their security services as well as some men and women allegedly close to the Jubilee house, for they continuously hear that from their harassers. Many amongst them, including those who are staunch card bearing members of the NDC maintain that before the NDC assumed power their vicinity was calm.

However, their peace appears to have evaporated recently, and they believe His Excellency John Dramani, Mahama, Chief of Staff, Juliuss Debrah, Minister for Interior, Honorable Alhaji Muntaka Mubarak, The IGP. Christian Tetteh Yohuno, Member of Parliament of that constituency, Honorable Abu Ramadan has what it takes to immediately deescalate the tension that is subtly brewing before it becomes a dent on President Mahama’s reset agenda, government and legacy even though it is not an executive decision but a judicial process though competent courts f Ghana that have spoken.

I rest my PEN.
Mustapha Alhassan
Pennsylvania, USA.