After almost four months of waiting, the Lower Manya Krobo Municipal Assembly will finally be inaugurated today at the assembly hall in Odumase-Krobo.
In all, 31 elected assembly members, 14 government appointees and the Member of Parliament for the area, Mr Ebenezer Okletey Terlarbi, who is an ex officio member, would be sworn into office.
Among the activities lined up for the inauguration include the election of the presiding member and the formation of the sub committees of the assembly.
A letter signed on Friday, April 4, 2014 by the Municipal Coordinating Director, Mr J.K. Adomako, and distributed to the various assembly members also directed the members to come along with their curriculum vitae.
The letter, which was also copied to all heads of departments in the municipality, urged them to be present and punctual.
It will be recalled that nearly three years after the metropolitan, municipal and district assembly elections were held nationwide in 2010, the Lower Manya Krobo Municipal Assembly election was put on hold because of a boundary dispute.
The source of this dispute was the introduction of the Legislative Instrument (LI) 1983 (Creation of New District Electoral Areas and Designation of Units), which aligned seven electoral areas - Zongo New Town, Akutue, Osukutu, Bungalow, Amedeka, Salon and Natriku- at Akuse, originally part of the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality in the Eastern Region, to the Dangme West District (Now Shai-Osudoku District) in the Greater Accra Region,
Subsequent to that, attempts have been made by the Electoral Commission (EC) during the 2010 District Assembly Election to rope in the candidates of the seven disputed electoral areas into the assembly elections under the Dangme West District which nearly turned bloody.
As a result, the Manya Krobo Traditional Council, led by the defender of the Krobo State, Mahefalor, Nene Kwesitsu Azago I and Nene Charles Mate-Korle ( Uncle Charles), both of blessed memory, secured an injunction to restrain the EC from conducting the election in the entire Lower Manya Krobo Municipality, thus, rendering the municipal assembly, the only assembly without assembly members in Ghana.
After what proved to be a costly legal battle spanning a period of one and half years (December 2010 to June 2012), the Supreme Court declared the said LI 1983 unconstitutional and retained the electoral areas in the Lower Manya Municipality in the Eastern Region.
More than two years after the national assembly elections were held and three years into the four-year term of the assembly, as well as one-and-half years after the ruling by the Supreme Court on June 13, 2012, the elections were finally held on December 3, 2013.
