A Koforidua High Court presided over by Justice Henry A. Kwofie has resumed sitting on the case, the Republic versus Nana Anku Dododja Didieye III, Odikro of Abomasarefo community in the Eastern Region.

Nana Dododja Didieye III has been charged with the alleged forgery of a ‘colonial document.’

State Prosecutors, Mr Fredrick Nawurah and Nana Gyankoma Sekyi, brought in a third witness on Tuesday to testify after the second witness Alhaji Bukari Yakubu, a documents examiner at the Police Laboratory Investigation Unit, was invited by the court to give testimony about the authenticity of the said document in court.

Kwame Didieye, the third witness and a cousin to Nana Didieye III accused Mr Daniel Afari Yeboah, of “What do you Know” fame, who is counsel for the accused, of allegedly compelling him (Kwame) to give false testimony in court in 2006, concerning the said colonial document.

He said Mr Afari Yeboah allegedly told him to tell the court that they found the said document in a horn of an animal to favour them to win the case at that time.

The witness said he had never seen the said document but heard of it when he was asked by the defense lawyer to testify that he saw it falling from the horn of an animal in a shrine at Abomasarefo.

The witness disclosed that his father was then the Odikro of Abomasarefo, and he was always close to his father until his death.

Thus, he was abreast with everything concerning the stool and the gods of the land.

He added that when his father died, it became necessary that his cousin, the accused, be made the next Odikro. So his late father had led Nana Didieye III to the gods to be initiated as the next of kin in 1990.

Kwame Didieye told the court that, before the installation of Nana Didieye III as Odikro, he (Nana) had brought his lawyer to go and have a look at the shrine with the explanation that there was a court order.

He said in 1990, he had gone to the shrine with Mr Daniel Afari Yeboah, who was the lawyer for Nana Didieye, one Kweku Sakah, Kwadwo Boahen and Iddrisu Denkyi.

According to the witness, because the room was small, all of them, including the lawyer, only stood and looked into the room for about three minutes and went out.

He said they did not allow strangers to enter the shrine initially, but that because it was said that there was an order from the court, they permitted the lawyer to enter.

He, however, emphasized that no other person entered the shrine after that visit until Nana Didieye III was installed Chief.

“I left the accused to be on his own and so I would not know if afterwards there had been any other person who entered the shrine since”, he added.

“The chief is the only person permitted to take care of the shrine; it is, therefore, the caretaker who has the sole authority to visit the shrine. So if he has gone there with another person, I might not know,” he stressed.

Kwame Didieye said after he gave the false testimony in court, he was always being haunted by the gods of Abomasarefo and so he had to go and confess to a pastor who prayed for him and later baptized him.

Mr Confidence Kodzo Gadzekpo, a former Chief Archivist at the then National Archives, had earlier appeared as the first witness in the case to testify that the accused had brought the said colonial document to be stored in the archives but that he knowing it was not a colonial document, had filed it as a “Special Collection.”

Alhaji Yakubu, Documents Examiner at the Police Laboratory Investigation Unit, and second witness, also indicated in his testimony that after examining the supposed colonial document, he had identified many characteristics, which suggested that the accused person might have authored the document.

This time around, Kwame Didieye, third witness and cousin to the accused is indicating that he never saw the said document but was rather told by counsel for the accused to give a false testimony in 2006 that he saw the ‘colonial’ document fall from the horn of an animal, to let the court believe its authenticity.

Proceedings were adjourned to June 18, when Mr Afari Yeboah, lawyer for Nana Didieye III, would cross-examine the witness.