A two-year-old land registration file, gathering dust in the system. Then, overnight — a ministerial appointment, and suddenly the documents are ready for collection. That is the story Prof. Anthony Owusu-Ansah (PhD), Executive Secretary of the Lands Commission Ghana, told publicly — not to celebrate efficiency, but to expose a troubling culture of selective service that he says has quietly corroded one of Ghana’s most vital public institutions.
The case is straightforward in its details, and damning in its implications. During the interview on Radio Ghana, Prof. Owusu-Ansah said, a citizen submitted land documents to the Lands Commission for registration and followed up diligently for close to two years. Despite the repeated visits, nothing moved. The paperwork sat untouched within the system, the applicant’s persistence yielding nothing but frustration.
Then came a change of fortunes — the individual was appointed a sector minister. Almost immediately after news of the appointment broke, Commission officials reached out to inform him his documents had been fully processed and registered, and that he was welcome to collect them.
Prof. Owusu-Ansah did not tell the story to highlight a success. He told it as a confession of institutional failure.
“They Are Capable — But They Choose Not To”
What makes the case particularly troubling for the Executive Secretary is not just the delay, but what the delay reveals.
“This incident made me realise that some staff are capable of doing the work,” he said, “but sometimes intentionally delay processes” — creating needless suffering for ordinary citizens who lack the connections to trigger action.
For Prof. Owusu-Ansah, that distinction matters. A broken system can be fixed with resources and restructuring. But a system that works selectively — that responds to titles and connections while ignoring the patient citizen at the counter — is a problem of culture and accountability. He described the practice as a “canker” eating at the credibility and operational integrity of the Commission.
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Beyond the individual case, the Executive Secretary warned of a broader consequence that rarely gets discussed: the citizen who simply gives up. When Ghanaians repeatedly encounter delays, unanswered follow-ups, and a system that appears unresponsive, many eventually abandon the process altogether — opting out of formal land registration and leaving their documentation, including lease status checks, unresolved. The institutional dysfunction, in other words, does not just inconvenience the public; it actively pushes people away from legal land processes, with long-term implications for land security and revenue.
A Reform Mandate
Prof. Owusu-Ansah made clear he intends to confront the problem head-on. His message to staff is that the era of status-dependent service must end, and that every applicant — minister or market trader — deserves the same standard of attention and turnaround.
For the Lands Commission, the incident is both an embarrassment and an opportunity: proof that the capacity exists within the institution to deliver, and a clear signal that what must change is not the ability to work, but the willingness to do so fairly.