Vice-Chancellor of the Bolgatanga Technical University (BTU) Prof. Samuel Esramus Alnaa has explained that the university pulled out of an agreement with its host community to acquire 440 plots of land due to financial constraints.
The university, he said, had sought assistance from the now defunct Savannah Accelerated Development Authority to pay a 2,000 per plot compensation to landowners after sealing the deal in 2013.
However, SADA could not provide the assistance before its dissolution in 2017, he stated.
Under pressure to honour its end of the deal, Prof. Alnaa recounted that the university then turned to central government for support.
“We were writing to government to help us, and government said that they don’t pay for land, they can only use the Compulsory Land Acquisition Act to acquire the land on our behalf, but we would have to pay for it. And we cannot use government money to pay for it,” he told journalists.
Despite these setbacks, the Vice-Chancellor said the university was still committed to the deal until the community and landowners started making new demands including raising the price per plot to 2,500 and insisting the school make additional payments for “economic trees, relocation of graves and shrines” among others.
But institution’s internally generated funds, he explained, were too meagre to meet these demands thus, the decision to abrogate the deal, he explained, he explained.
The Vice-Chancellor said this in reaction to a protest waged in the community demanding his removal over what a group of community members described as a betrayal and unfair treatment on the part of management of the institution.
The group, calling itself Sumbrugu Youth and Development Association, accused Prof. Alnaa-led management of the university of disregarding the land acquisition deal.
It said, despite landowners and the community making concessions, the Vice-Chancellor ended the deal and has decided to acquire a site in a different community for the school’s future expansion under the pretext that they have not been cooperative.
But Prof. Alnaa said the decision to abrogate the agreement was taken by the Governing Council of the school after talks with landowners broke down.
