Tension has flared up in Teacher Mante, a community located in the Ayensuano district along the Accra to Kumasi highway in the Eastern Region. The unrest stems from allegations of a public cemetery being sold to an unidentified developer, prompting enraged chiefs and residents to stage a protest at the site on Monday morning. Clad in red and black attire, the demonstrators claimed that the cemetery had been graded in the dark, with existing graves already plundered.
Nana Oheneaku Asamaning (I), the Baamuhene of Teacher Mante, recounted that they confronted Asante Bediatuo at the location, who purported to be the chief of Okanta. They accused him of authorizing the demolition of the cemetery for a project supposedly sanctioned by Okyenhene. The Baamuhene reported the incident to the Teacher Mante Police station, but Asante Bediatuo failed to make an appearance.
Expressing disbelief in Okyenhene’s involvement, the Baamuhene stated, “Our king knows the implications of destroying the royal cemetery; he won’t do that.” He connected the demolition to recent misfortunes in the community, such as a destructive rainstorm that damaged nearly half of the houses. The community is determined to resist the project and is demanding the return of remains and bones looted from the graves.
This incident adds to the mounting concerns about land grabbing and the indiscriminate sale of public cemeteries, leading to tensions in various communities along the Nsawam to Apedwa stretch of the Accra to Kumasi Highway. Last year, a similar situation unfolded in Amanase, where a Royal cemetery was sold to an investor for the construction of a fuel station without the consent of local chiefs. This forced the chiefs to exhume skeletons from the human bodies, storing them at the palace and causing an uproar among residents.
On April 20, 2023, the Suhum District Police Command retrieved the skeletons of exhumed human bodies from Amanase Chief’s Palace to the morgue to de-escalate the tension.
-The Post Ghana
