The National House of Chiefs has rejected the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) recommendation to merge the Office of the Administrator of Stool Lands (OASL) with the Lands Commission.

The House maintains that the OASL, which currently operates as a separate and independent constitutional body, should remain as such under the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources.

The National House of Chiefs recalls that the creation of OASL as an independent constitutional body was the request by the member chiefs on the Consultative Assembly prior to the passage of the 1992 Constitution because of the poor management and handling of stool land revenue under the then Lands Commission.

The House enumerates the reasons for the creation of the OASL as contained in the memorandum to the 1992 constitution as follows: That the OASL was created to:

1. Manage stool land revenue efficiently; stool lands generate income from sources such as rent, royalties, and concessions. The office was created to collect and manage this revenue efficiently.

2. Promote transparency and accountability; before the creation of OASL, the handling of stool land revenue was often uncoordinated and lacked proper accountability. The office has since helped to ensure proper record-keeping and transparency.

3. Ensure fair distribution of stool land revenue.

4. Protect stool lands and support traditional authorities in land management; The office assists stools and skins in the administration and management of their lands, helping to prevent misuse and disputes and lastly to

5. Separate stool land revenue management from ownership. Even though the stools own the land under customary law, the office manages the financial proceeds so that the funds benefit both traditional authorities and local development.

The House emphasised that the OASL was established under Article 267 (2) of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana and with the firm belief that the recommendations from the CRC will not inure to the benefit of the chieftaincy institution. The house gives reasons why it is against the recommendations as follows: That:

• OASL was created for chiefs, and since its establishment, the office has discharged its functions credibly. The Chiefs had always wanted their funds managed separately for the benefit of both traditional authorities and local development.

• The recommendation defeats the purpose of the establishment of OASL as a distinct agency with the sole focus on supporting and assisting the Stool and Skin Lands administration. Thus, OASL was not created merely for revenue collection but to help in the management of stool lands as captured in the memorandum to the 1992 Constitution and contained in articles 267 (7) & (8).

• The proposed merger will relegate issues of stool and skin lands to the background.

• The OASL helps with the establishment of Customary Land Secretariats (CLSs) and provides land administration advisory services to the chiefs.

The National House of Chiefs has observed that the Lands Commission is currently bedevilled with numerous court litigations with a tall list of garnishee orders on their bank accounts, which will put stool land revenue at risk; chiefs are skeptical about mixing stool land management with state land management.

Therefore, merging the OASL with the Lands Commission will increase the bureaucratic processes needed for beneficiaries to access funds.

• The assumption that the OASL and Lands Commission need to merge to make them efficient because the two agencies are operating in silos is not tenable because Section 14 of the Land Act, 2020 (Act 1036), Article 267(7)(8) of the Constitution, and Section 7(1)(2) of the Lands Commission Act, 2008 (Act 767), require the Lands Commission and the OASL to collaborate on customary land administration.

• The House found that the Lands Commission has not been able to properly manage state and vested lands under its care and observed how state land management by the Lands Commission has generated a lot of controversy in recent years, which is just about 15 to 20% of the total land area of Ghana.

Again, the Lands Commission is not able to manage the 2% of vested lands under its care properly. It takes a long time for the Lands Commission to release ground rent from vested lands to the OASL for disbursement to the stools, and there are no proper records on vested lands revenue.

• The House has also observed that the merger of the four land sector agencies in 2008 under the new Lands Commission Act, 2008 (Act 767), has not yielded expected results in the management of public lands, registration, and land surveying in the country. The merger of these four land sector agencies has rather worsened the challenges that led to the merger. The House observed that, before the merger of the four divisions, the Land Valuation Board was operational in many districts across the country, bringing services close to their clients, but these district offices have since closed. The House further adduced other reasons leading to the separation of the Administrator of Stool Lands from the Lands Commission during the promulgation of the 1992 Constitution, as follows:

The Chiefs realised that the then Lands Commission had a lot of work to do, which affected efficiency in the delivery of services to the general public.

The then Lands Commission at the time managed fisheries, forestry, mining, stool land activities, not to mention land registration, land valuation, and public land management. Thus, the Consultative Assembly members realised that one agency performing these functions could lead to a lot of setbacks and recommended a separate constitutional body to handle stool lands activities in Article 267, an argument advanced by the sitting Juaben Paramount Chief, who was a member of the Consultative Assembly.

The drafters went further in Article 269 (1), recommending the establishment of a Minerals Commission, a Forestry Commission, a Fisheries Commission, and other commissions as Parliament may determine, which shall be responsible for the regulation and management of the utilisation of the natural resources concerned and the coordination of the policies in relation to them.

The House has therefore called on the government to strengthen the OASL to execute its functions efficiently and effectively for the Chiefs by enhancing the operational capabilities of the office rather than merging it with the Lands Commission.

The House urged the government to grant the Office financial clearance to recruit more officers to beef up its current staff capacity to be able to manage about 80% lands under the customary land sector. The House is of the view that the customary sector controls the largest landmass in Ghana and, therefore, should have a separate office well-resourced to manage to perform.

In addition, the mandate of the office should be expanded to cover other customary lands so that the revenue from those lands would also support local development projects.

The National House of Chiefs is therefore of the view that the status quo should remain and asked: ‘If something is not broken, why do you fix it?"

In a statement issued by the Principal Registrar, Janet Naa Adjetey Adjeley, on behalf of the National House, the House has rejected the recommendations of the Constitutional Review Committee to merge the Lands Commission and the Office of the Administrator of Stool Lands.