Homowo Celebration In Limbo Over Court Injunction

The climax of this year’s Homowo celebrations, slated for tomorrow, August 15, 2015, may not come off, following an application for interim injunction seeking to stop the celebration.

Nii Tetteh Kwei II and five others, describing themselves as kingmakers of the Ga Traditional Council, have dragged 17 people, including Mr George Adama Tackie, a claimant to the Ga Stool, and the Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Mr Okoe Vanderpuije, to the High Court in their bid to place an embargo on the celebration of the Homowo Festival tomorrow.
The applicants are pleading with the High Court to restrain the respondents from engaging in traditional rituals until the National House of Chiefs (NHC) has disposed of a petition challenging the legitimacy of Mr Tackie as the Ga Mantse.

Hearing of the application has been slated for August 18, 2015, but counsel for the respondents, Mr William Adumua-Bossman, is challenging the locus of the applicants.

A statement of case filed on behalf of the applicants by The Law Consult, a legal firm, is asking the court to stop the respondents and their agents “from sprinkling kpokpoi at Ga Mashie or pouring libation at Ga Mashie and the Abola Stool House or entering the Stool House at Abola or holding meetings or conferences at the Ga Traditional Council during the Homowo Festival period until the final determination of the substantive suit”.

Kpokpoi is a traditional food prepared with maize and normally consumed with palm nut soup.

The substantive case has to do with a petition before the NHC which is asking the court to pronounce on who the legitimate Ga Mantse is.

According to the respondents, the application was misconceived because Mr Tackie’s name and particulars as Ga Mantse and successor to the late Boni Nii Amugi II had already been entered by the NHC in the National Register of Chiefs pursuant to Section 59 of the Chieftaincy Act, 2008 (Act 759).

It said the applicants’ motion was misconceived procedurally because the intended induction of Mr Tackie into the membership of the Ga Traditional Council could only be carried out by Mr Okai, Nii Nsaki II, Nii Ayikai III, Numo Ogbamey III and Numo Mensah III and not the other respondents listed in the application for injunction.

Source: Graphic