The National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration – with less than a month to hand over power to a Nana Akufo-Addo government – is selling prized state lands to persons with close links with the Mahama administration.
The faces behind the lucrative land deals are said to be busily regularizing documents and also altering some agreements in their favour to continue to loot the state.
Some of the lands are DVLA yard, 37 lorry park and some lands being occupied by military installations.
Documents currently in possession of the media reveal that one company known as EC Development Company believed to be owned by persons who have strong ties with outgoing President John Mahama, is currently regularizing and uttering all the agreements in an attempt to take possession of the state.
The Ghana Infrastructural Investment Fund (GIIF) which is being used as a conduit to divert state lands at the Airport City Project to some individuals, originally leased about 88 acres of land within the airport area from the Lands Commission ostensibly to commence the phase two of the Airport City Project.
When everybody thought that GIIF was developing a master plan to commence phase two of the Project, it rather brought on the EC Development Company from nowhere and sub-leased that land to it (company).
Now the company is defying all ground rules to acquire the said land illegally and then share the proceeds amongst the perpetrators.
Unlike the Ghana Airport Company which handled the phase one of the project where parcels of land were given to individuals and institutions to develop on their own, in this particular deal, a parcel of land about 88 acres is being handed over to only one company to develop.
What is mind-boggling is the fact that after altering all the ground rules, the Lands Commission is being forced to regularize the agreements.
For the EC Development Company to be able to properly sub-lease the 88 acres of land, there were certain specified and established conditions by the Lands Commission that had to be met before it could legally acquire it. But as it is now, none of those conditions had been met by officials of the company, yet they are allegedly busily altering some of the details in the agreement and then forcing the Lands Commission to regularize the land title documents.
Details of what are contained in the original agreement and the altered agreement prepared by the company remain shocking as per conditions in the agreement that will enable the EC Development Company to acquire the land from GIIF prepared by the Lands Commission.
The EC Development Company was to show clearly how it was going to comprehensively resettle the people who are living within that enclave, some of them being the National Police Workshop, the Police Church, Police Cluster of Schools, DVLA and more importantly, the 37 lorry park.
As it is now, EC Development Company had reportedly prepared a new agreement altering all the conditions in the previous agreement.
For example, it had stated that it would only pay GH¢40 per acre of the land per year instead of a premium of $4,000 per year.
It should also be given 11 years instead of the original two years to start the development of the land, failure of which it (land) would revert to the owners.
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