PROF. T.M. OCRAN, J.S.C:
This is an appeal from the unanimous decision of Judicial Committee of the National House of Chief, Kumasi, delivered on 8th July 2004.
THE FACTS AND ISSUES
The facts of the case, as laid out in the decision of the National House and the Statements of Case submitted by both sides to the controversy, may be summed up as follows.
As a result of a war between Juaben in Ashanti, and the rest of Ashanti, in or about 1875, the Juabenhene and some of his people migrated to the present Eastern Region, settled in the Koforidua area and created New Juaben. The land acquired by Nana Asafo Agyei, the Omanhene who led his people to New Juaben, included Suhyen, where some of his subjects had settled.
In or around 1915, a successor Omanhene of New Juaben, Nana Kwaku Boateng I, while on a tour of Suhyen, appointed an Odikro for the town, purportedly because of its strategic importance as the boundary between the Stool lands of New Juaben and Akyem. This first Odikro, Nana Kwaku A…