The GaDangme Traditional Council has expressed shock and dismay over an attack on the elders of the Nii Odoi Kwao family of Osu who are the allodial owners of Nima lands.

In a video footage that is circulating, some youth of Nima are seen attacking some elders who had gone to the township to sprinkle 'Kpekple' during the Homowo festival on their ancestral land.

In a statement co-signed by the President of the Council, Nii Ayikoi Otoo, he alleged that the “youth had been mobilized by a rival stranger Mantse [Chief] installed by some settlers without the knowledge and consent of the landowners, and in competition with another Mantse [Chief] which had heightened tensions within the community.”

He said, “The youth became incensed during the ceremony, threatened the elders, and warned the landlords never to step foot in Nima anymore. In their anger, they scattered the traditional food on the ground thereby showing great disrespect and contempt to the landowners.”

According to the Council, the incident is unacceptable and disrespectful of the GaDangme culture and practices and sacrilegious of all that Homowo stands for.

“It also shows evidence of intolerance and amounts to acts tending to cause a breach of the peace which acts do not engender peaceful co-existence and cooperation and likely to escalate into a tribal conflict between the people of Osu and the stranger settlers,” the Council cautioned.

The Council condemned and warned against a repetition of the incident and called for an unqualified apology from all those involved in the attack to be rendered to the Elders of the Nii Odoi Kwao family.

“We note that such acts of challenges to allodial owners of land by strangers can lead to forfeiture of their right to remain on the land,” the Council warned.

“We finally also throw our weight fully behind the statement issued by the Ga Traditional Council and call upon security agencies to act decisively to bring the perpetrators of the dastardly act to book,” it concluded.