The International Central Gospel Church, (ICGC),owned by Pastor Dr. Mensah Otabil, has been caught waist-deep in alleged illegal land-grabbing saga at Tsa Addo, near Burma Camp, in Accra.
The land in question belongs to Ataa Tawiah Tsinaiatse and Numo Ofoli Kwashie family of Accra.
What is striking is the fact that the ICGC is pushing the alleged illegal agenda through some dreaded land guards, who are terrorizing the rightful owners of the land.
Apart from the use of land guards, the ICGC has allegedly resorted to the use of money to divide the front of the rightful owners in order to secure the over 26-acre land.
Some of the land guards and officials of ICGC were arrested last week in connection with the alleged illegal land deal.
The ICGC is claiming it secured the said land from some people from Teshie and the East Dadekotopon Development Trust.
However, the Tsinaiatse and Kwashie family has the Land Title Certificate on the land, something those that ICGC bought the land from do not have.
The Land Title Certificate was issued to the rightful owners after an Accra High Court, presided over by Justice K. A. Ofori-Atta, in a ruling on December 7, 2010, ordered the Registrar of Lands to issue a certificate on the land to the Tsinaiatse and Kwashie family.
To perpetuate the alleged illegality, sometime in June/July, 2018, Mr. Benjamin Tetteh Quaye, head of the rightful owners of the land, was arrested by some 30 armed policemen and taken to the Greater Accra Regional Police Command, under prearranged circumstances, but the ICGC was made to understand that the land was for the Tsinaiatse and Kwashie family.
After that incident, the ICGC, cunningly, went back to the rightful owners of the land with a kind of pacification with drinks and mobile phones as a precursor for a meeting with the rightful owners of the land.
On August 1, this year, the ICGC sent a popular bishop to meet with the Tsinaiatse and Kwashie family, but the family made it clear that it will not deal with the ICGC over the land.
The family went further to caution the ICGC not to enter the land, but the ICGC has defied the warning and has entered the land to start development.
Sources say that it would have been bloody if the family had resorted to the use of land guards, as the ICGC is doing.
Meanwhile, it has been established that the land that the ICGC is forcibly and illegally developing was part of lands the Military, under General Akafia, released to the family in 1997.
It was to be used for a Military Training Ground. The La Stool confirmed the release and the La Mantse, Nii Kpobi Tettey-Tsuru, signed the deed of confirmation. The late Right Honourable Peter Ala Adjetey was the attorney of the family.
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