DEESA PENROSE (SUBST BY EBU KOFI DOODU) vs. NII NUERTEY AKPO I

IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF JUDICATURE

IN THE SUPREME COURT

ACCRA – A.D. 2026

CORAM: PWAMANG JSC (PRESIDING)

PROF. MENSA-BONSU (MRS.) JSC

KOOMSON JSC

GAEWU JSC

ACKAAH-BOAFO JSC

CIVIL APPEAL

NO. J4/42/2015

28TH OCTOBER, 2026

DEESA PENROSE ………… PLAINTIFF/APPELLANT/

(SUBST. BY EBUSUAPANYIN KOFI DOODU) APPELLANT

VRS

NII NUERTEY AKPO I ……….. DEFENDANT/RESPONDENT/

RESPONDENT

JUDGMENT

KOOMSON, JSC

INTRODUCTION:

This is an appeal by the Plaintiff/Appellant/Appellant (‘the Appellant’) against the judgment of the Court of Appeal, (Civil Division), Accra dated 13th February 2014.

The Appellant sought declaration of title to all Adamorobe lands including

Seduase lands, which were portions in the possession of the Defendant/Respondent/ Respondent (‘the Respondent’) or persons claiming through him. Whiles the High Court dismissed the entire claims of the Appellant, the Court of Appeal held that the Appellant was entitled to a declaration of title to all Adamorobe except the portions belonging to the Respondent. The Appellant has appealed to this Court, seeking a reversal of the Court of Appeal’s decision and a final judgment in his favour.

BACKGROUND TO THIS APPEAL:

The proceedings arise from an action commenced in June 2001. The Appellant, was then the acting head of the Kwaakwa Asiampong Asakyiri family of Aburi Adamorobe in the Eastern Region of Ghana. He contended that his predecessors founded Adamorobe in 1772 and established within the adjoining forest a family shrine known as Osedu Akwatia. Certain elders, including one Owusu, were directed to reside near the shrine for its protection, and the settlement that developed there became known as Osedu Forest, Oseduase, or Seduase. The Appellant further stated that, in later years, migrants from Kpone in the Greater Accra Region sought permission from Owusu, then head of the family, to reside and cultivate portions of the Adamorobe land. Their request was granted on terms requiring the annual rendering of tolls such as fowls, eggs, yams, and other items during the festival associated with the shrine. The migrants accepted those conditions and occupied various parts of the land.

In 1974, Nana Kwaakwa Asiampong II assumed the position of head of family and Chief of Adamorobe. He caused the Adamorobe lands, including the areas occupied by the Respondent’s predecessors, to be demarcated and swore a Statutory Declaration asserting the family’s ownership. A plan of the land and the Declaration were submitted to the Land Title Registry at Koforidua, and the land was registered in 1987 as No. 6721/1987. The Appellant maintained that the Respondent’s predecessors continued to render the agreed tolls until the 1990s, when the Respondent describing himself as chief of Seduase and leader of the Kpone settlers began asserting title to the portions they occupied, claiming that those portions had been purchased from the Appellant’s family.

By an amended writ of summons and statement of claim dated 20th August 2010, the Appellant claimed the following reliefs from the Respondent:

A declaration of title or parcel of land lying and situate at Adamorobe and described in the schedule to the indorsement below (including Seduase land).

An order declaring that the statutory declaration made by the Defendant claiming ownership of Seduase is null and void

An order that any sale, grants, or alienation or purported sale, grant, and alienation and or registration of Seduase lands by the Defendant is null and void, and same be set aside and expunge from the records of the Lands Commission or any other public office.

An order of perpetual injunction restraining the Defendant, his servants, agents, assigns, and other persons tracing interest from the Defendant from interfering with the land in dispute.

Recovery of possession.

Damages for trespass.

The Respondent, who claimed to be the chief of Seduase, acknowledged that the Adamorobe land originally belonged to the Appellant’s family and that his people were settlers. However, he denied the Appellant’s account of the arrangement. He asserted that his predecessors had purchased all the portions they occupied and produced receipts in support. The people of Seduase have various farms and properties over there over a long period of time without paying any tribute to the

Appellant’s family or challenge from them. The Respondent stated that he had caused the aggregate of these purchased lands to be surveyed and prepared a plan and Statutory Declaration, which he submitted to the Land Commission in Accra, where it was registered. He did not counterclaim.

The principal issue at trial and in the Court of Appeal concerned whether the Appellant’s family had sold portions of the Adamorobe land to the Respondent’s predecessors, or whether the Kpone settlers had merely been granted licences to occupy the land on agreed terms. Both the High Court and the Court of Appeal determined that the Respondent’s account was to be preferred, having regard to the totality of the oral and documentary evidence. In effect, the Appellant retained title to all Adamorobe lands except the portions sold to the Respondent’s predecessors.

GROUNDS OF APPEAL

The Appellant was dissatisfied with the decision of the Court of Appeal just as he was with that of the High Court and appealed to this Court on the following grounds:

The judgment is against the weight of evidence.

There was no evidence that the Appellant family ever sold all the Adamorobe lands as expressed in the self-serving statutory declaration of the Respondent. The Court of Appeal’s over-reliance on the said statutory declaration as the basis of the Respondent’s defined land has occasioned the Appellant a substantial miscarriage of justice.

The Court of Appeal erred in law when their Lordships failed to place an evidential burden on the Respondent on how his family acquired the land, as expressed in the statutory declaration from the Appellant family.

Particulars of error of law:

Having asserted that his family acquired that size of land, the aggregate of which is expressed in the statutory declaration, the Respondent has the burden to prove how that family acquired it and the identity of the acquisitions.

Additional grounds of appeal may be filed upon receipt of the record of proceedings.

The Appellant did not file any additional grounds of appeal, notwithstanding the possibility of filing same as indicated in ground iv above.

THE CASE OF THE APPELLANT

The Appellant’s principal submission is that the Respondent’s asserted title to the Seduase lands rests substantially, if not exclusively, upon Exhibits 7 and 7A, being the statutory declaration registered at the Lands Commission in the Respondent’s favour. It is contended that those instruments are, in their nature and effect, self-serving declarations and ought therefore to attract only the most limited probative weight. Reliance was placed, in that regard, on Adwoa Borkor v. Agbo Oddoye [2021] 174 GMJ 641. The Appellant further submits that serious doubt attaches to the contents of Exhibit 7, since the Respondent represented himself as acting for a large family, whereas the persons named in Exhibits 7 and 7A as having acquired lands from the Appellant’s family were, on the Appellant’s case, not members of the Respondent’s family. Moreover, those persons having allegedly acquired separate and distinct parcels, the Respondent’s aggregation of such disparate acquisitions into a single-family holding is said to obscure, rather than clarify, the precise identity, location and extent of the land claimed.

On that footing, and upon the further submission that Exhibits 7 and 7A were not instruments capable of conveying any estate, interest or right in land, the Appellant submits that the Court of Appeal fell into error by treating Exhibits 7 and 7A as a sufficient foundation for its conclusion that the Respondent’s family owned the Seduase-Kpone lands.

The Appellant next impugns Exhibit B, a receipt dated 27th April 1919 and said to have been executed by Kwaku Bosompra, the late Chief of Adamorobe, together with one Sogyargree, in respect of lands at Osadu-Powano forming part of the lands claimed by the Respondent. The Appellant’s argument is that the evidence having shown that Kwaku Bosompra died in 1916, the signature attributed to him on a document bearing the date 1919 could not, without more, be accepted as genuine. It was therefore submitted that the evidential burden shifted to the Respondent to establish that Bosompra was in fact alive at the material time, or otherwise to provide a satisfactory explanation for the apparent inconsistency.

Finally, the Appellant relies upon the registration, in 1987, of the Adamorobe lands, including the disputed lands, under the statutory declaration made in favour of the Appellant’s family. That registration, it was submitted, preceded the Respondent’s registration of the disputed portions in 1995 and constituted notice to the world, including the Respondent. The Appellant accordingly contended that the earlier registration conferred an indefeasible title in the registered lands; and that, the Respondent not having challenged that title at the material time, any subsequent challenge was precluded, save on grounds properly founded upon fraud or misrepresentation.

THE CASE OF THE RESPONDENTS

As regards Exhibits 7 and 7A, the Respondent contends that those instruments were made by him in his capacity as head and lawful representative of the Seduase-Kpone family. The site plan annexed to the declaration, he submits, reflected the composite result of a series of purchases made by his great grandfather from various chiefs and other persons, some of which acquisitions were expressly recited in the declaration itself. The Respondent further maintains that the declaration, particularly having been published on three separate occasions in a newspaper, constituted a formal and public assertion of ownership over the Seduase lands. Its purpose, according to his case, was to proclaim the proprietary claim of the Seduase-Kpone family and to put beyond doubt, or at least to contest, any rival claim, including that advanced by the Appellant.

The Respondent further submits that the Appellant, by his pleadings, did not put in issue the Respondent’s representative capacity in relation to the disputed Seduase lands. In support of that proposition, reliance was placed, among other authorities, on Fori v. Ayirebi [1966] GLR 627, for the settled principle that a party who fails to traverse a material averment made by his adversary is taken not to have joined issue upon it, with the consequence that no evidence need be adduced in proof of the unchallenged averment. It follows, the Respondent argues, that the Appellant’s belated attempt to impeach Exhibits 7 and 7A on the ground that the Respondent lacked authority to make them is misconceived; and that neither the trial court nor the Court of Appeal erred in according those exhibits such probative value as they considered proper.

The Respondent also contends that the open, long-standing and undisturbed possession and occupation of the disputed lands by the Kpone migrant community, without objection or resistance from the Appellant’s family, operated in equity to preclude the Appellant from now asserting an inconsistent title. In that regard, the Respondent invokes the doctrine of proprietary estoppel and relies on Quist v. George [1974] GLR 1 as furnishing an additional basis upon which his claim to the disputed lands may properly be sustained.

Lastly, the Respondent maintains that the material findings of the High Court, affirmed by the Court of Appeal, were amply supported by the evidence adduced at trial. He accordingly submits that any proper re-evaluation of the record must lead to the conclusion that the Appellant failed to establish title to those portions of land which, on the findings of the courts below, had been acquired by and belonged to the Respondent’s predecessors.

THE APPELLATE JURISDICTION OF THE SUPERME IN CIVIL ACTIONS

The settled approach of this Court, in the exercise of its appellate jurisdiction, is that findings of primary facts made by a trial court and affirmed by the intermediate appellate court are not lightly to be disturbed. Where such concurrent findings are grounded on the evidence, are not vitiated by perversity, misdirection, or material inconsistency with the record, an ultimate appellate Court will ordinarily accord them due deference and resist the invitation to substitute its own view merely because another conclusion might conceivably have been reached. The principle is one of disciplined appellate restraint, not abdication of jurisdiction. See Achoro v Ankefella [1996-97] SCGLR 209.

On a second civil appeal, this Court retains full power to correct errors, whether of fact, law, or mixed fact and law. It will not, however, undertake a fresh assessment of the evidence merely because the appellant prefers a different conclusion from that reached by the two courts below. In Obrasiwa II and Others v Otu and Another [1997-98] 1 GLR 858, this Court affirmed the principle with precision: concurrent findings will be disturbed only in exceptional cases, and only where the appellant shows that the decisions below were plainly wrong. The rule therefore regulates the exercise of appellate jurisdiction; it does not curtail the jurisdiction conferred by Article 131 of the 1992 Constitution.

The practical consequence is clear. A second civil appeal remains available as a matter of constitutional right where the conditions for appeal are satisfied. But an appellant who seeks to disturb concurrent findings must identify a material error of law, fact, evaluation, or procedure, or otherwise demonstrate that a miscarriage of justice has occurred. In the absence of such a showing, the Court will not intervene. The appeal will ordinarily be dismissed, and the judgments of the courts below affirmed.

ANALYSIS OF THE GROUNDS OF APPEAL

Before turning to the grounds, we should state the precise scope of the findings to which this Court’s restraint applies. The two courts below did not agree on the outcome. The High Court dismissed the Appellant’s claim in its entirety. The Court of Appeal varied that decision and declared the Appellant’s family entitled to all Adamorobe lands save the portions found to have been acquired by the Respondent’s predecessors. No cross-appeal was filed against that variation, and it stands.

The findings which are truly concurrent, and to which the principles in Achoro v Akanfela [1996-97] SCGLR 209 and Koglex Ltd (No 2) v Field [2000] SCGLR 175 apply, are therefore those concerning the disputed portions at Seduase. Those findings will be disturbed only if the Appellant brings the case within one of the recognised exceptions. The exceptions include a finding unsupported by evidence, a finding resting on a misapprehension of the evidence, the wrong application of a principle of evidence, and a failure to consider material evidence. See Gregory v Tandoh IV [2010] SCGLR 971.

Ground (iv), which merely reserves the right to file additional grounds, is not a ground of appeal. No additional ground was filed. It is accordingly struck out as offending rule 6 of the Supreme Court Rules, 1996 (C.I. 16).

Grounds (ii) and (iii)

We shall consider grounds (ii) and (iii) together in accordance with the evidence and the law as counsel for the Appellant did in his statement of case. Together they raise a single question. Did the Respondent establish, by evidence of acceptable quality, that the Appellant’s family had divested itself of the disputed portions at Seduase by sale to the Respondent’s predecessors? And if so, was the extent of those portions sufficiently proved? The Respondent does not claim the whole of Adamorobe. He admits the allodial title of the Appellant’s family and claims only the portions said to have been purchased.

The allocation of the burden of proof must be stated at the outset, since ground (iii) complains that the Court of Appeal failed to place any burden on the Respondent. The Appellant, as the party seeking a declaration of title, bore the burden of persuasion throughout: sections 11 and 14 of the Evidence Act, 1975 (NRCD 323).

But the Respondent did not merely deny the Appellant’s case. He admitted the Appellant’s allodial title and set up a case that his predecessors had purchased the portions in dispute. A defendant who takes that course assumes the burden of producing evidence in support of the specific facts he asserts, even though he does not counterclaim. See In re Ashalley Botwe Lands; Adjetey Agbosu v Kotey [2003-2004] SCGLR 420.

The Respondent was therefore required to lead evidence of the purchases on which he relied. That evidence had to cover the persons from whom each purchase was made, their authority to alienate, and the land each purchase covered. If he failed to do so, the Appellant’s admitted title would prevail. To the extent that the Court of Appeal did not state this expressly, the omission is one of exposition. The real question for this Court is whether, on the evidence, the burden was in fact discharged.

The Appellant pleaded that Adamorobe lands have never been saleable. That plea cannot stand against Exhibit 11, the transcript of proceedings before the Jackson Commission. The transcript was tendered without objection and was not impeached in cross-examination. In it, Nana Osae Amantem, a predecessor of the Appellant in the headship, testified on 9th September 1957 that portions of the land at Seduase had been sold to persons from Kpone and that the portions sold were marked by Ntome trees.

As the statement of a predecessor in title against the interest of the family, it is admissible against the Appellant and entitled to considerable weight. The finding of both courts below that the Seduase lands were capable of sale was amply justified. The Appellant has not seriously pursued the contrary position before this Court.

Exhibit 11 must, however, be read as a whole and not beyond what it says. Nana Osae Amantem did not testify that the whole of Seduase was sold. He stated that the founder of the village “got the land” by way of gift. He stated that it was the portions acquired later which were sold and marked by Ntome trees. He also stated that he could not say whether the consent of the Adontenhene had been given.

Exhibit 11 therefore establishes that sales took place. It does not by itself establish that any particular portion was sold, or that the whole of the area now claimed by the Respondent was acquired by purchase. For those matters, the Respondent was required to look to the receipts and to the evidence of the witnesses who testified to the transactions.

The Respondent’s own case, as presented to this Court, is that his great-grandfather acquired the lands in a series of purchases from various chiefs and other persons. A receipt is evidence of payment. It is not, without more, evidence of a valid alienation.

We would add that no evidence was led by the Appellant to show that any of the purchases was repudiated by his family at any time between the dates of the receipts and the commencement of this action in 2001. The long acquiescence of the family, with knowledge of the sales, is a relevant consideration in assessing whether those transactions were accepted as binding. It is, however, relevant only as a matter of evidence, and we do not treat it as an independent source of title.

The Appellant attacks Exhibit B, a receipt dated 27th April 1919 bearing the signature of Kwaku Bosompra, then Chief of Adamorobe. His ground is that Bosompra had died in 1916, so the signature attributed to him could not be genuine. It was submitted that the burden thereby shifted to the Respondent to prove that Bosompra was alive at the material time.

The submission proceeds on a premise that was never established. The Appellant led no evidence of the date of Bosompra’s death. No witness testified to it, and no document was tendered in proof of it. Nor was the assertion put to the Respondent or to any of his witnesses in cross-examination. Exhibit B was admitted without objection, and its authenticity was not challenged at trial. The assertion appears for the first time in the Appellant’s statement of case before this Court, and the submissions of counsel are not evidence.

It is elementary that he who asserts must prove. A party who relies on a fact essential to his case bears the burden of producing evidence of it and of persuading the court of its existence: sections 11 and 14 of the Evidence Act, 1975 (NRCD 323). Where the assertion is of a kind capable of positive proof, it is not proved by mere repetition, however confident: Majolagbe v Larbi [1959] GLR 190. The date of death of a chief of Adamorobe is plainly a matter capable of such proof. The Appellant, who traces his title through the line of chiefs to which Bosompra belonged, was well placed to produce it.

No burden could shift to the Respondent on the strength of an unproved assertion. There was, in consequence, nothing for the courts below to resolve, and no basis on which this Court could now discount Exhibit B. The complaint fails.

The Appellant contends that Exhibits 7 and 7A are self-serving and ought to carry little or no weight. He relies on Adwoa Borkor v Agbo Oddoye [2021] 174 GMJ 641. The principle is not in doubt. A statutory declaration is no more than the declarant’s own solemn assertion of a claim. It conveys nothing, creates no title, and is not evidence of the truth of its contents merely because it has been registered.

Had the Court of Appeal treated Exhibits 7 and 7A as the foundation of the Respondent’s title, the complaint in ground (ii) would be well founded. The proper use of those exhibits is more limited. The declaration is relevant as evidence of the date and manner in which the Respondent asserted his claim publicly. The plan is useful only insofar as it is shown to correspond with the acquisitions proved by independent evidence.

The Respondent’s representative capacity was argued at some length. As a matter of pleading, the Appellant sued the Respondent alone. He described him in paragraph 24 of the amended statement of claim as the leader of the Kpone settlers who were laying adverse claims to the land. Having framed his case in that way, the Appellant cannot contend that the Respondent was not the proper person to answer it. See Fori v Ayirebi [1966] GLR 627 and Hammond v Odoi [1982-83] GLR 1215.

That, however, is a different question from the one the Appellant actually raises. His complaint is that Exhibit 7 aggregates as the holding of the Respondent’s family lands acquired by several persons, some of whom were not members of that family. Nothing in the Appellant’s pleading concedes that point.

The Appellant alleged that the Respondent’s declaration and plan were prepared in secret and in bad faith. The record answers that allegation. Notices of the intended registration were published in the Daily Graphic on 1st, 2nd and 3rd May 1996. The declaration was thereafter registered in 2001, see page 106 of the ROA. Publication of that kind is notice to the whole world, and the Appellant’s family must be taken to have known, from May 1996 at the latest, that the Respondent was asserting ownership of the Seduase lands. No objection was lodged. The allegation of secrecy has no foundation, and the allegation of bad faith, which rested on it, falls with it.

The effect of such notice must, however, be kept within its proper bounds. It fixes the world with knowledge of the claim. It does not establish the truth of the claim, nor does the failure of any person to object to it amount to an admission. This is the same principle on which we have earlier stated in this Judgment regarding the registration of the Appellant’s own declaration, Exhibit A, in 1987, that it could not confer title on his family. Each declaration gave notice of what the declarant claimed, and neither proved it. The acquisition of the disputed portions must therefore be established, if at all, by the receipts and the oral evidence. It is to that evidence that we now turn.

This is the substance of ground (ii), and it must be squarely answered. A party who relies on a grant or purchase of land must prove the land granted or purchased with reasonable certainty. See Anane v Donkor [1965] GLR 188 and Bisi v Tabiri alias Asare [1987-88] 1 GLR 360. The Court of Appeal accepted that several purchased portions had been brought together in a single plan for registration. We agree that a composite plan need not reproduce the boundary description in each receipt word for word. But the Appellant’s complaint was not that the plan lacked verbal identity with the receipts. It was that the Respondent had not shown that the area delineated in Exhibit 7A was the sum of the portions actually purchased.

The evidence established that each of the receipts, Exhibits B series and 2 to 6, related to a specific parcel purchased by a named Kpone settler. The parcels so purchased were later brought together in a single plan, Exhibit 7A. A single notice of the intended registration, with the delineation of the aggregate area, was published in the Daily Graphic in May 1996. It is not necessary, in those circumstances, for the boundaries of the disputed land to be reconstructed receipt by receipt. The composite plan is thus proved by that evidence, and not merely by its own contents.

Moreover, from May 1996 the Appellant’s family had notice of precisely what land the Respondent claimed. When the Appellant commenced this action in 2001, he knew the extent of the claim he had to meet. Yet at the trial he led no evidence that the delineation in Exhibit 7A exceeded the land purchased. The extent of the land in dispute was, in truth, not contested at the trial. It is not open to the Appellant to contest it for the first time before this Court. We are satisfied that the portions shown in Exhibit 7A were sufficiently identified as the land acquired by the Respondent’s predecessors.

Subject to what we have said concerning Exhibit B, we are satisfied that the Respondent discharged the evidential burden that lay on him. The concurrent finding that the disputed portions were acquired by purchase, and were not held under a licence terminable at the will of the Appellant’s family, was supported by the evidence. Grounds (ii) and (iii) accordingly fail

Ground (i): The judgment is against the weight of evidence

Where an appeal is brought on the omnibus ground, the appellant must show, by reference to the whole record, that the conclusion reached below is not supported by the evidence. The appellate court must itself examine the evidence on both sides. See Tuakwa v Bosom [2001-2002] SCGLR 61 and Djin v Musah Baako [2007-2008] 1 SCGLR 686.

The Appellant’s own case was that the Kpone settlers were licensees, that they rendered annual tolls of fowls, eggs, yams and other items at the festival of the Osedu Akwatia shrine, and that they did so until the 1990s. Had the payment of such tolls been admitted by the Respondent, it would have been fatal to his case of ownership by purchase. A purchaser does not render tribute to his vendor for land he has bought.

The Appellant bore the burden of persuasion on his claim to title, and the licence was the foundation on which that claim rested. The Respondent denied it, and led documentary and oral evidence of purchase. In the face of that denial, it was incumbent on the Appellant to lead cogent, credible and reliable evidence that the settlers held the land as licensees and not as purchasers.

While the Appellant contends that the Kpone settlers accepted the terms of a licence, no evidence was adduced to establish the continued payment of the annual tribute at the festival. Furthermore, the Appellant failed to adduce any evidence of protest, complaint or any remedial action on their part to register their objection to the non-payment of the annual tribute or tolls in the 1990s when the settlers stopped paying the tolls or tributes to the Appellant’s family.

Had the Appellant adduced credible and reliable evidence in support of the licence, the Court would have been inclined to favour the account of the Appellant regarding the licence.

The failure to complain, particularly at a time the Appellant’s family had registered the Statutory declaration covering the disputed lands suggest at best acquiescence at worst an acknowledgement that the original arrangement if any, had been overtaken by subsequent outright sales evidenced by the receipts.

The Respondent and his witnesses denied that any tolls were rendered. The contest on this issue was therefore between the oral evidence of the Appellant’s witnesses and the Respondent’s documentary evidence of purchase, supported by the oral evidence of his witnesses. Where authentic documentary evidence conflicts with oral evidence concerning a transaction, the court leans in favour of the documents: Yorkwa v Duah [1992-93] GBLR 279 is of persuasive authority here. This Court has emphasised the high evidential value the law attaches to documentary evidence. It has held that a trial court which declines to act on a document must give cogent reasons for doubting its veracity: Fosua & Adu-Poku v Dufie (Deceased) & Adu-Poku Mensah [2009] SCGLR 310.

The receipts relied on by the Respondent were admitted without objection. The only challenge to their authenticity, the complaint concerning Exhibit B, has failed for want of proof. They stand, moreover, with the admission of the Appellant’s own predecessor in Exhibit 11 that portions of the Seduase lands had been sold to persons from Kpone. Against that body of documentary evidence, the oral assertion that the settlers were licensees paying tolls could not prevail. The trial judge, who saw and heard the witnesses, was entitled to prefer the Respondent’s case, and the Court of Appeal was right to affirm that preference. We see no ground on which it can be disturbed.

The Respondent relied on grants made by him, without objection from the Appellant’s family, of land for the construction of schools and a borehole. The Appellant’s answer, in paragraph 14 of his amended reply, was that the grants were not challenged because they served the community.

We do not find that explanation persuasive. On the Appellant’s own case, the Respondent was a licensee with no power to alienate. A grant of land by such a person to the Government and to private proprietors is an unequivocal assertion of a title adverse to the landlord. A family which in truth owned the land would not be expected to stand by while it was alienated in this way. Nor would it be expected to wait until years later to raise an objection for the first time in litigation, whatever the public benefit of the projects concerned.

We do not regard the grants as proof of title in themselves. But the conduct of the Appellant’s family in the face of them is evidence which the court is entitled to weigh. It is consistent with the Respondent’s case that the land had been purchased, and it is difficult to reconcile with the Appellant’s case that the settlers were licensees. To that extent, it lends further support to the concurrent findings of the courts below.

The Appellant’s principal reliance under this ground was on Exhibit A. That is the statutory declaration made by Nana Kwaakwa Asiampong II and registered in 1987 as No. 6721/1987. The Appellant argues that its registration preceded that of the Respondent’s declaration, operated as notice to the world, and conferred an indefeasible title which could be impeached only for fraud.

The submission fails at the beginning. Exhibit A is not a land certificate issued under the Land Title Registration Law, 1986 (PNDCL 152). The record shows that it was registered under the Land Registry Act, 1962 (Act 122), see pages 221 to 229. Registration under Act 122 did not confer indefeasible title. It regulated the priority of registered instruments affecting the same land and gave notice of them. It did not cure defects in the instrument registered, and it did not enlarge the effect of the instrument itself. See Amuzu v Oklikah [1997-98] 1 GLR 89.

A statutory declaration, as we have said, is not a conveyance. It is a unilateral assertion of a claim, and registering it does not turn that assertion into title.

The Appellant’s argument faces a more fundamental difficulty. As established by the findings upheld above, the Appellant’s predecessors sold the disputed portions decades before Exhibit A was made. Act 122 governs priority between competing instruments; it does not permit an original owner to recover, through a later declaration, land that the owner’s family has already alienated.

Whether the Respondent’s predecessors held a customary freehold or some lesser interest, the Appellant’s family could not by its own declaration resume what it had parted with. No one can give, or reclaim by declaration, what he no longer has. The question of whether the Appellant’s family had notice of the Respondent’s interest therefore does not arise, and we express no view on the doctrine of notice as it applies to a vendor. Although Act 122 and PNDCL 152 have both since been repealed by the Land Act, 2020 (Act 1036), the rights of the parties fall to be determined under the law in force when the transactions took place. Accordingly, ground (i) accordingly fails.

The Respondent advanced, in the alternative, a case founded on proprietary estoppel, relying on Quist v George [1974] 1 GLR 1. Since the appeal fails on the findings of purchase, it is unnecessary to decide that point, and we express no opinion on it.

CONCLUSION

61. For the reasons explained in this judgment, the court is of the opinion that the Appellant has not shown that the courts below erred in finding that the disputed portions at Seduase were acquired by the Respondent’s predecessors by purchase.

Consequently, the appeal against the judgment of the Court of Appeal dated

13th February 2014 fails and is hereby dismissed.

(SGD.) G. K. KOOMSON

(JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT)

(SGD.) G. PWAMANG

(JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT)

(SGD.) PROF. H.J.A.N. MENSA-BONSU (MRS.)

(JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT)

(SGD.) E. Y. GAEWU

(JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT)

(SGD.) K. T. ACKAAH-BOAFO

(JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT)

COUNSEL

RAPHAEL BANAANGMEN ESQ. FOR PLAINTIFF/APPELLANT/APPELLANT WITH

PRINCE BOAHENE GYAN ESQ.

A. K. BANNERMAN-WILLIAMS JNR ESQ. FOR DEFENDANT/RESPONDENT/

RESPONDENT