Party Regional Chairman Accused Of Destroying Church Building

The Central Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, Mr. Butey Dankwa Smith, last week, is believed to have taken the legendary NPP violence to a new level by causing the demolishing of a church house that belongs to the Calvary Charismatic Centre Worship.

According to the Pastor Of the church Mr. Alex Koufie, Mr. Dankwa Smith has been threatening them since the NPP won the elections in the year 2000.

Narrating the story, Pastor Alex Koufie said that, the church initially acquired the 2 acre plot of land from the Assin District Assembly and obtained a permit to put up a temporal structure for Worship until the Government fully acquired the land from the chiefs of Assin Juaso.

He said that, they constructed the temporal structure in 1999 and started worshipping in it but soon after the NPP won the 2000 elections, Mr. Butey Dankwa Smith, who at the time, was the chairman of the Assin North Constituency, came to confront the church leaders claiming possession of the land. He issued a threat that his party was now in power and nothing could stop him from taking over the land.

To the pastor and his church members, the claim for the land by Darkwa Smith came as a surprise because there was no complaint from any quarter when the Church started putting up the temporal structure. The subsequent claim of the NPP Regional Chairman appeared rather strange to the Church.

A sad looking Pastor Koufie said that upon further enquiry by the church elders with officials of the Assin District Assembly as to whether the land has been allotted to Mr. Butey Smith, the Church was again told that the land had neither been given to the NPP Regional Chairman nor was the government intending to buy it since it has been released back to its original owners, the chiefs of Juaso. The Church was then advised to purchase the land from the chiefs.

The Church then took steps to buy the land at a cost of nine million cedis and secured the indenture and other relevant papers from the chiefs.

Pastor Koufie said, when the Regional chairman of the NPP realized the turn of events, he grew more aggressive and started issuing more threats on the leaders of the Church. He even once had the audacity to lock the church doors with his own padlock and thus prevented the congregants from attending their Sunday morning church service.

The persistent threat compelled the Church to discuss the issue with the chiefs and elders of Juaso. The latter promised to summon Mr. Dankwa Smith to the palace and ask him to desist from harassing the church leaders. However, after several attempts by the chiefs of Juaso to call the NPP Chairman to order had failed, the chiefs advised the church leaders to sue Mr. Butey before the law courts.

According to Pastor Koufie, Mr. Dankwa Smith without any regards for God and respect for the chiefs of Juaso, started digging a foundation on the land with the intention of building a Hotel just close to the church building.

The pastor said that when they realized that the NPP Regional Chairman really meant to illegally and forcibly eject them they decided to heed the advice given them by the chiefs, so they quickly went to the Assin Fosu Circuit Court to seek redress; this was done after first lodging a complaint with the Fosu divisional office of the Ghana Police Service. The CID officer who took the complaint and is in charge of the case is Mr. Abbiw.

According to the Church leadership, Mr. Butey Smith has been invited several times to the police station but he has never responded.

Instead, to the utter shock of the Church, four macho men from the Mempeasem area of Fosu known as Pompey, descended on the premises of the Church while the area was in darkness due to the load shedding exercise. Armed with a pick axe, a chainsaw machine, the thugs believed to be acting on the orders of the NPP regional chairman dug out all the cement blocks that the wooden structure rested on, and destroyed parts of the Church.

Later in a telephone interview with Mr. Smith, the NPP chairman flatly denied the accusation and said that he had not ordered any group of persons to go and demolish any church building.

Mr. Butey said he has all the papers covering the land and that there is evidence to show that he acquired the said land in 1995 from the same Juaso chiefs. He mentioned two prominent members of that church, Mr. Yaw Barima, a timber merchant and Mr. Annimako, a worker of E.C.G. at Fosu who approached him to apologize to him for trespassing on his land.

On the destruction wrecked on the church building, this is what the NPP Regional Chairman said: “If you are litigating with somebody and the person dies through an accident, it does not mean you are the one who killed the person”.