Group demands government action over raid on Ghanaian tycoon Sam Jonah's Nigerian real estate company

A Ghanaian pressure group has demanded that Accra intervene with Nigerian authorities over what it described as a coordinated raid on Jonah Capital, the property company linked to Ghanaian mining magnate Sir Sam Esson Jonah, at the River Park Estate in Abuja.

The Concerned Citizens of Ghana made the call at a press conference in Accra, where its convener, James Clark, alleged that the company's premises were invaded on the authority of Nyesom Wike, Nigeria's Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, following a revocation of the estate's development lease agreement. Clark said armed officers attached to the counter-terrorism unit of the Nigeria Police took part in an operation at the estate's Gallery Clubhouse, during which part of the entrance was excavated.

The group urged Nigerian authorities to halt all enforcement actions at River Park Estate, guarantee the safety of Ghanaians connected to it, and let the arbitration and court proceedings already under way run their course. Clark said the group was not seeking to shield any Ghanaian from accountability, but was demanding respect for the rights of Ghanaians doing business abroad.

The demand is the latest turn in a dispute that has run for roughly two years, drawn in two national governments, and become a test of how West Africa's two largest Anglophone economies treat cross-border investment.

A contested estate and a disputed ownership

River Park Estate is a residential development of more than 500 hectares in Lugbe, on the southern edge of Abuja. The land was allocated during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo to Jonah Capital Nigeria Limited, the company promoted by Jonah, for the estate's development. Control of that company, and of the estate, is precisely what is in dispute.

Nigeria's Corporate Affairs Commission lists Jonah as a 40 percent minority shareholder in Jonah Capital Nigeria without a directorship, while a Nigerian couple, Adeniran Ogunmuyiwa and his wife, are recorded as holding 60 percent and serving as directors. Jonah's camp contests how those records came to stand, alleging that the commission's registrar general altered the company's ownership structure, removed its directors and invalidated corporate filings on the strength of a police report, despite a court injunction and a directive from the inspector general halting action in the matter.

The account is disputed at nearly every level. Obasanjo, in a letter to the police dated July 10 last year, denied Jonah's claim that he personally allocated 501 hectares to him, calling the assertion "absolutely untrue, fictitious, misleading and libellous." Wike, in a national television appearance in September last year, described Jonah as the owner and controller of the company, a characterization other Nigerian parties to the dispute have challenged as inconsistent with the official records.

Criminal charges dropped, civil fight goes on

The dispute widened into criminal allegations when Nigerian police filed a multi-count forgery charge against Jonah and three co-defendants. That case collapsed. Nigeria's Attorney General reviewed the file and, in a letter dated December 30 last year, found no prima facie case against Jonah, Kojo Ansah Mensah, Victor Quainoo and Abu Arome, and affirmed that an earlier Special Investigation Panel report was valid and unbiased.

The Attorney General went further, according to the Ghanaian group, describing the findings of the police monitoring unit as highly misleading and faulting the police for publicly declaring private individuals the owners and managers of the estate without any judicial determination. The High Court of the Federal Capital Territory struck out the charges on January 20 this year.

The underlying civil dispute over who owns the estate remains before the courts, and the lease agreement is the subject of international arbitration. Clark said it was troubling that the same company was now facing renewed pressure from a different arm of the same government, this time led by the FCT minister, while those legal processes were pending. He also cited earlier actions, including the alleged unilateral alteration of shareholding at the Corporate Affairs Commission and the detention of an executive by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission over claims the Attorney General later dismissed.

The man at the center

Few African executives carry the corporate standing that Jonah brings to a dispute like this, which is part of why it has resonated so loudly in Accra.

Jonah rose from underground mine worker to become one of the most celebrated business figures on the continent. He spent years running Ashanti Goldfields, the Ghanaian gold miner, and served as its chief executive as it grew into one of Africa's largest gold producers and the first African company to list on the New York Stock Exchange. He remained a senior figure through its 2004 merger with South Africa's AngloGold to form AngloGold Ashanti, and served as president of the enlarged group.

Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II as an honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire in 2003, he built a portfolio of interests spanning mining, finance and real estate across several African countries through his investment vehicle, Jonah Capital. River Park Estate is among the most prominent of those ventures outside Ghana, and its troubles have made him the face of a broader anxiety about the security of Ghanaian capital in Nigeria.

Clark drew a pointed contrast with how Ghana had handled Nigerian interests, noting that when a private developer demolished part of the Nigerian High Commission in Accra in 2020, the perpetrator was arrested and the government rebuilt the structure. He argued that the treatment of Jonah Capital undermined the regional integration that the Economic Community of West African States has sought to advance, including the free movement of people and the protection of investments across borders.

The demand adds to a diplomatic strand that Ghana has already begun to pursue. Jonah petitioned Ghana's foreign minister late last year, asking the government to raise the matter with Nigeria and to notify ECOWAS of possible breaches of regional investment protections. Whether Accra escalates further may depend on what happens next at River Park Estate, where bulldozers and armed officers have repeatedly arrived while the courts are still being asked to decide who owns the ground beneath them.