Nearly two months after their homes were reduced to rubble, families in the Amrahia Dairy Farm community say they are still waiting. No arrests have been made. No official explanation has been given.
And now, they are taking their plea directly to the president. Residents are calling on President John Dramani Mahama to order an investigation into the demolitions that swept through their neighborhood.
The destruction hit several structures, including Heaven Investment Chapel. Families say they lost property worth thousands of cedis. They insist they bought the land legally and built on it over the last two years.
The core issue here is security. Not national security, but the basic sense of security that comes from knowing your home won’t be torn down without warning.
For these families, that feeling is gone. They built their lives on land they believed was theirs. Now, they have nothing but questions.
The disputed land sits inside the roughly 2,000-acre Amrahia Dairy Farm. The state originally acquired that land through Executive Instrument 1970 for dairy production. The farm operated for about three decades.
Then it went dormant. In 2020, the administration of former President Nana Akufo-Addo, through the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, returned 40 percent of the acquired land to the original stool and family owners.
That decision was supposed to resolve long-standing ownership questions. Instead, it appears to have opened a new chapter of conflict. Competing claims over portions of the land have persisted since that handover.
The demolitions in Amrahia appear to be the violent expression of those unresolved tensions. Residents say unidentified individuals carried out the destruction.
They have submitted several petitions to state authorities. They have received no response. A group of demonstrators, including members of Heaven Investment Chapel, staged a protest.
They want state institutions to investigate. They want those responsible brought to justice. What is at stake here goes beyond this one community.
If landowners can lose their property to unidentified individuals, and if state authorities do nothing for two months, then every family that has bought or built on disputed land in Ghana is at risk. The Amrahia demolitions are not an isolated incident.
They are a symptom of a broken system for resolving land disputes. The residents say they acquired their land legally. They developed their properties over two years.
They built homes. They built a church.
They did everything right, as far as they understand it. And still, their properties were destroyed. President Mahama now faces a choice.
He can order an investigation, as the residents are asking. Or he can let the matter drift, as it has for nearly two months. The residents have made their position clear.
They want answers. They want accountability.
They want to know who sent the unidentified individuals who tore down their homes and their church. Two thousand acres of state-acquired land, a dormant dairy farm, a partial return to traditional owners, and now demolished homes. The pieces are all there.
What is missing is an official explanation and a clear path to justice. The Amrahia community is watching.
Other communities with similar land issues are watching too. What happens next will signal whether the state can protect people who build their lives in good faith on land with contested history.
