Posted: Daily Guide |Friday, 11 June 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
THE SUPREME Court has found Reverend (Rev) Ransford Obeng, former head of the Calvary Charismatic Church (CCC), and others, including one Joseph Opoku, C.K Acolatse, R.K Owusu and C.O Kpodo, guilty for attempting to defraud the Assemblies of God Church, Ghana, of its right of ownership.
The CCC was a branch of the Assemblies of God Church.
On November 16, 1992, Rev. Obeng and his accomplices wrote a letter in their capacity as members of the Board of the CCC, to the Assemblies of God Church, in which they stated their decision to cease affiliation with the Assemblies of God, with effect from November 19, 1992.
They therefore sought to claim ownership of the church building and the office block, as well as its properties.
After a lengthy trial which spanned 1993 to December, 2001, a High Court in Kumasi, presided over by Justice Quaye, ruled in favour of the Assemblies of God Church, since according to him, evidence showed that even though the plot of land was acquired by Calvary Charismatic Ministry (CCM), CCC jointly invested in development of the church building with them, which creates joint ownership rights in both CCC and CCM.
Whilst Rev. Obeng and his accomplices were aggrieved by the said decision and appealed against it, the Assemblies of God Church asked for more reliefs by way of variation of judgement, and therefore proceeded to the Appeals Court, where Justices Coram Lartey, Tweneboa-Kodua and Asare-Korang, by a majority decision, ruled on April 22, 2005, dismissing the appeal and affirming the judgment of the lower court.
The Appeals Court therefore insisted that the church building and the office block, as well as movable properties acquired before November 16, 1992, should be held in trust for the Assemblies of God Church.
Dissatisfied with the decision of the Appeals Court, Rev. Obeng and his accomplices proceeded to the Supreme Court, where after going through various arguments, the five justices, who sat on the case on February 3, 2010, including Justices Dr. Date-Bah, Adinyira, Owusu, Dotse and Anin Yeboah, concluded that the circumstance under which Rev. Ransford Obeng purported to have changed the registration documents with respect to a plot of land situated at No 12, Atimpongya, upon which CCC, which was later changed to CCM, was built, smacks of fraud.
This, the court said, was evident in the fact that CCM was not in existence when the land was purchased in 1990, and that “the attempt by the 1st defendant, Rev. Ransford Obeng, to change the purchase date from 1990, when there was no division, to 1992, smells of fraud.”
In view of that, they said “it will be manifestly unjust to allow the defendants to enrich themselves by their own fraud.”
The suit emanated from a letter which was written by the defendants on November 16, 1992, in their capacity as Board of the CCC, and addressed to the Assemblies of God Church, in which they informed the church of their decision to cease affiliation with them.
The profound effect of this letter compelled the Assemblies of God Church to file a suit in the High Court, to make claims for its properties, since the defendants (CCC) were making desperate moves to take over both movable and immovable properties of the church, including the church building itself.
The Supreme Court sought to determine whether CCC was a local branch of the Assemblies of God upon its establishment in 1985, or became an affiliate only in 1990 when it acquired the ‘set in order’ status.
It also wanted to ascertain whether the decision of the CCC Board to cease affiliation with the Assemblies of God in November 1992, amounted to a division or secession from the church, whilst probing to determine whether the plaintiff (Assemblies of God) lacked the capacity to have instituted the suit against the defendants.
The Justices of the Supreme Court noted, “Our own in-depth analysis and study of all the evidence on record, coupled with the exhibits and the judgments of the trial and the Appellate Courts, is that, what happened in the Calvary Charismatic Centre was that the defendants used their position in the CCC at the material time, hijacked the church, declared their cessation agenda in order to satisfy their own spiritual and material advantages.”
From the scenario that had been given in the record of appeal, the Court said it was clear that the word ‘division’ and ‘secession’ could be used interchangeably, since they meant one and the same thing.
As far as the Court was concerned, the findings of the trial judge on this issue, which was concurred by the Court of Appeal, were sound, both in facts and the law, and found no reason to set it aside, emphasising the fact that “a party against whom two concurring findings have been made first, the trial Court and the Appellate Court must be slow to bring the appeal to the second Appellate Court such as this Supreme Court.”
In such an instance, the Supreme Court indicated that there should be cogent, strong, legal grounds of appeal that must be filed and argued to convince the second appellate Court to reverse the findings of fact.
On the whole, the Judges noted, “we endorse the finding that what happened in the CCC was a division, and that in the context of this case, secession and division mean the same thing.”
The Court thus upheld the judgment of the trial High Court dated December 11, 2001 as was varied per the majority judgment of the Court of Appeal per Justices Lartey and Tweneboa Kodua, dated April 22, 2005, in entirety, and accordingly dismissed the appeal by the rebellious priest.
