The Supreme Court has held that land compulsorily acquired and vested in the State cannot be validly sold or granted by its former owners merely because there is an expectation that the Government will subsequently release the land back to them.
In a judgment on competing claims to the former Nungua Farms at Borteyman, the Supreme Court ruled that a grant made by the Nungua Stool while the land remained vested in the State was invalid, and could not later be transformed into a valid title simply because Government subsequently released the land to the Stool.
The Court’s decision came in Sino Africa Development Co. Ltd v. Royal Bell Investments Ltd & Ors, Civil Appeal No. J4/44/2025, decided on June 3, 2026.
The dispute concerned approximately 2,570.05 acres of land belonging originally to the Nungua Stool which was compulsorily acquired by the colonial Government in 1940 for animal husbandry and related purposes. The acquisition vested the land in Government and extinguished the Stool’s interest in the acquired land.
Decades later, Government agreed to release part of the acquired land to the Nungua Stool. A lease executed on 12 August 2010 released approximately 974.53 acres to the Stool, with the lease taking effect from 16 April 2009.
But before that release took effect, the Nungua Stool had already purported to grant portions of the State-owned land to several persons between 1996 and 2000.
The central legal issue before the Supreme Court was therefore whether those earlier grants, made at a time when the Stool had no legal title to the land, could subsequently become valid when Government released the land to the Stool.
In a 3-2 split decision, the majority answered no.
A Person Cannot Give What it Does Not Have
There is an Akan proverb that says, in substance, that when emptiness promises you cloth, you should first ask where the cloth is. The law expresses a similar idea through the principle of nemo dat quod non habet, to wit, that a person cannot give what he does not have.
Writing the lead judgment, Justice Bartels-Kodwo JSC held that for as long as the land remained vested in Government, the Nungua Stool had no title capable of being conveyed to another person.
The Court relied on the principle expressed in Memuna Moudy & Others v. Antwi [2003–2004] SCGLR 967, explaining that compulsory acquisition vests the land in Government and destroys competing estates, rights, titles and interests in the acquired land.
The Court thus applied the basic conveyancing principle nemo dat quod non habet which means a person cannot give what he does not have.
Justice Bartels-Kodwo held that between the 1940 acquisition and the effective release of the land in April 2009, the Nungua Stool had no title in the land. Accordingly, any grant made during that period by the Stool was invalid. The grants made to the 3rd to 7th Respondents in 2000 therefore could not create a legal interest in their favour merely because the State subsequently returned the land to the Stool.
The Court went further to reject the argument that Government’s subsequent recognition of the earlier transactions could cure the defect. According to the Supreme Court, Government could not, by recognition, render lawful what the law had already deemed unlawful.
Selling Land in Anticipation of Government’s release is Good for Nothing
One of the most important discussions of the case was that the earlier grantees were not simply unaware of the State’s interest.
The Supreme Court found that the documents through which some of the Respondents acquired their interests expressly acknowledged that Government had not yet released the land.
In one of the grants, the instrument recorded that the families had approached the Stool upon information that Government intended to formally release the land.
For the Supreme Court, that recital was decisive and demonstrated that the parties knew, at the time of the transaction, that the land remained vested in Government and that the Stool had no title to convey. The Court therefore rejected the attempt to use the doctrine of feeding the estoppel to validate those transactions after the State subsequently acquired title in favour of the Stool.
The Doctrine of “feeding the estoppel” and Why it Failed
The doctrine of feeding the estoppel ordinarily operates where a person purports to grant an interest in land which he does not presently possess but subsequently acquires. Once the grantor later obtains that interest, the after-acquired title may, in appropriate circumstances, automatically pass to the earlier grantee.
The Supreme Court, however, stressed that the doctrine is not automatic.
First, the original grant must contain an unequivocal assertion by the grantor that he has the title he purports to convey.
Second, the doctrine is subject to the protection of a subsequent bona fide purchaser for value without notice. That is a legal phrasing for a person who buys the land in good faith without knowledge of the surrounding legal flaws.
Third, and critically in this case, the person seeking the benefit of the doctrine must himself have acted in good faith.
The Court found that the Respondents’ grants failed on those grounds.
Rather than representing that the Stool had title, the instruments disclosed that the land was still vested in Government and that a release was merely anticipated. There was therefore no representation of existing title upon which an estoppel could operate.
The Court also found that the 3rd to 7th Respondents knew when they acquired their interests that the land had been compulsorily acquired and that the Stool had no title to convey. They therefore could not invoke an equitable doctrine intended to protect good-faith purchasers.
As the Court put it, equity could not be used to protect a grantee who knew that his grantor had no title and nevertheless proceeded with the transaction.
Buying Land When the Stool has Lawful Title Gives a Greater Protection
Unlike the earlier Respondents, who acquired the disputed land when it was compulsorily acquired by the State, Sino Africa, the appellant acquired its interest after Government had released the land to the Nungua Stool.
The company entered into two subleases on 16 August 2010, shortly after the Government’s release, and those transactions were made with the consent of the Lands Commission.
The Supreme Court found no concrete evidence that Sino Africa had notice of the earlier purported grants.
It therefore treated the company as a bona fide purchaser for value without notice, acquiring its interest after the Stool had obtained the legal interest necessary to grant the land.
The Court held that the earlier defective transactions could not be used to defeat the later bona fide purchaser.
A broader warning on State land
The judgment therefore goes beyond the immediate dispute between Sino Africa and the Respondents.
Its significance lies in the Court’s insistence that the statutory vesting of land in the State cannot be circumvented by private parties who deal with the land on the assumption that Government will subsequently return it to the original owners.
Justice Tanko Amadu JSC, concurring with the majority, placed the point particularly strongly when he reasoned that the case concerned an attempt to use equity to give legal effect to transactions made when the grantor had no title and the grantees knew of that defect.
The principle, he said, was that the law could not permit parties to deal in State land before its release and later rely on equity to validate those transactions.
