REPUBLIC vs. KUMASI TRADITIONAL COUNCIL; EX PARTE NANA KOFI DEI

Thirty years before the institution of the present action in the Kumasi Traditional Council, the defendant-applicant-respondent (hereinafter called the respondent), swore the great oath of Ashanti to the effect that neither the plaintiff-respondent-appellant (hereinafter called simply the appellant) nor any member of his family was a royal of the Ntonso (Oppong Tenteng) stool. The respondent was the occupant of the Ntonso stool both at the time when he swore the great oath, and also 30 years later at the date of filing of the writ of summons herein. But for a period during the Nkrumah regime he was replaced as Ntonsohene by the late Nana Yiadom Boakye Ansah, a kinsman of the appellant. The constitutional status quo was however restored by the Chieftaincy (Amendment) Decree, 1966 (N.L.C.D. 112), which accomplished by one stroke both the summary destoolment of the late Nana Yiadom Boakye Ansah and the reinstatement of the respondent as Ntonsohene. In the inevitable partisan jubilation ov...