Another contempt-of-court thriller is brewing in Ghana’s Upper East Region after the Paramount Chief of Talensi, Tongraan Kugbilsong Nanlebegtang, told the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Christian Tetteh Yohuno, to disobey an order issued recently by the High Court ‘2’ in the region’s capital, Bolgatanga.
The High Court, presided over by Justice Ernest Pascal Gemadzie, ordered the Upper East Regional Police Command on Tuesday, 10 February 2026, to provide the Managing Director of Nanlamtaaba Enterprise, Zongdan Boyak Kolog, with “protection and assistance” at his gold-mining site in Talensi.
The court delivered the order in a ruling after the licensed small-scale miner, who is popularly known in the region as Polo, told the court in an application filed through his lawyer, Abena Ankoma Asomaning, that he needed police protection and assistance to do his work.
He said the application was prompted by some death threats he received at Gban, the community where his concession is located. Those threats have prevented him from working at the site since 2023.
The Chinese company had opposed the ruling and, through its lawyer, Joseph Awakpaksa, asked the court to annul it. The company initially succeeded in getting the judge to suspend the order after citing the same security reason the paramount chief would rehash and mimic in the letter he would write later to the IGP against Polo.
But the judge stood his ground, rejecting the Chinese company’s request and maintaining his ruling that the police should provide Polo with protection and assistance.
Following that ruling, the disappointed paramount chief and paramount promoter of the Chinese company wrote a letter to the IGP through the Upper East Regional Police Command on Tuesday, 3 March 2026, telling him not to “grant him (Polo) any police protection”.
He also forwarded copies of that letter to some top government officials, including the Minister for the Interior, Mubarak Mohammed Muntaka, and some state agencies.
Throwback
This is not the first time the same paramount chief, who himself is widely criticised and known for being very quick to drag people to court and for summoning his subjects to his palace to pay fines for anything he deems insulting, is meddling in court cases in the region.
Just three years ago, there was widespread jubilation in the region against him when he got himself involved in a contempt-of-court case at the same High Court ‘2’ that had a different judge, Justice Alexander Graham, in charge at the time.
Early on Friday, 10 March 2023, the paramount chief sent two men— his secretary, Richard Sunday Yinbil, and the Chief of Baare, Naab Nyarkora Mantii— to Justice Graham’s chambers to invite him to his palace for a discussion about some cases from Talensi pending before the judge.
After listening to their lengthy message, the judge reckoned that the secret invitation was a move to corrupt him and influence his decisions on those cases.
He did not say a word. He was just looking at them from behind a pair of glasses, with his head tilted towards the one doing the talking.
But as soon as the two messengers finished talking and stepped out of the chambers into the packed courtroom, he ordered the law enforcement officers stationed at the court to arrest them immediately.
While the two men stood sweating and trembling in the dock in front of a large court audience, the furious judge asked them to produce the paramount chief himself at once to face a criminal trial. The paramount chief was at home, wondering why it had taken so long for the men to return.
The two men were charged with contempt of court. They pleaded guilty after the judge told the court what they had told him privately in his chambers.
And while the court was still waiting for the paramount chief to appear and face the same charge, the judge convicted the two accused persons on their own plea and sentenced them.
When the Tongraan learnt from home that his men were rather answering questions from the dock, he communicated with a lawyer by phone to plead with the judge on his behalf. Their fate was just a stroke of the judge’s pen away from the not-too-distant Navrongo Central Prisons.
The paramount chief escaped prosecution after some lawyers, numbering about twelve and coincidentally present in the courtroom at the time for different cases, begged the angry judge profusely to spare him and the judge reluctantly did so.
But the secret, illegal mission undertaken to the chambers of the no-nonsense judge backfired so badly against the paramount chief and his assigns that the entire country reacted with an overwhelming scale of rage and shock after the news broke and spread nationwide.
A few weeks before that contempt incident unfolded, Justice Graham had granted Polo (the small-scale miner mentioned earlier) an interlocutory injunction application he filed against Earl international Group (Ghana) Gold Limited, a Chinese company formerly known as Shaanxi Mining (Ghana) Limited, and four other defendants to restrain them from trespassing on his concession.
The judge was also due to deliver a ruling on a contempt motion Polo had also filed through his lawyer against some agents of the defendants in connection with the same case about four days before the paramount chief sent his agents to invite the judge to his palace for the closed-door meeting.
Many believed that the paramount chief had planned to corrupt the judge at the proposed meeting, turn the judge’s mind against Polo and some other persons he might be targeting, and get him to favour the Chinese company in both the ongoing court cases and any future lawsuits.
The plot was a disaster.
Throwback (cont’d)
Five days after the paramount chief’s agents were convicted and sentenced, Justice Graham was attacked at night at his residence by some unknown persons.
The judge fled Bolgatanga after the bedtime raid, with military and police personnel escorting him out of the region, according to court sources.
Several residents and civil society organisations in the region suspected the paramount chief was behind the attack.
While asking the Chief Justice at the time, Justice Kwasi Anin-Yeboah, to reward Justice Graham and other good judges for such courage and dedication to upholding justice, many individuals and groups also requested an investigation into the paramount chief’s possible involvement in the attack on the judge.
Justice Graham’s involuntary absence from the court left the Polo-Shaanxi case and other cases in limbo.
Another judge, Justice Frederick Kwabena Twumasi, took over the court after Justice Graham left. But before the new judge could sit on the case, he, too, came under a violent attack from some unknown persons and fled the region.
Justice Ernest Pascal Gemadzie succeeded Justice Twumasi, and he is still presiding over the court at present.
But now, the same paramount chief, who probably now fears to invite judges or magistrates in the region to his palace for ex-parte meetings because of the past experience, is “contemptuously” and openly telling the IGP in a letter to ignore and disobey the order the new High Court judge had uncompromisingly issued on the case.
This development is reminiscent of a controversial letter the same paramount chief wrote in November, 2018, when the Nayiri (the Overlord of Mamprugu), Naa Bohagu Mahami Abdulai Sheriga, made a humble request to the Upper East Regional House of Chiefs to have the Chief of Namoalug, Nab Kolsong Na-Laam Nyuurib, gazetted as a member of the house.
The Tongraan wrote through his secretary to the house, saying the Nayiri had no locus to make such a demand and he urged the house to dismiss the Nayiri’s request.
He had earlier asked the Nayiri to allow him to install chiefs for Namoalug and some four other traditional areas in Talensi (a district that falls under the Mamprugu Traditional Area) but the Nayiri declined because he (the Tongraan) was traditionally unqualified to do so.
The counter letter the Tongraan wrote in 2018 to the Upper East Regional House of Chiefs was seen as not just a rude payback but also as an affront to the authority of the the Nayiri, who installed him (the Tongraan) as a chief in 2015 and from whose seat of power in Nalerigu he (the Tongraan) draws his own recognition as a paramount chief in Talensi.
The six claims the Tongraan made against Polo in his letter to the IGP
There is no secret about the paramount chief’s support for the Chinese mining company involved in the court case with Polo.
He has always defended the interests of the foreign company openly and vehemently; but he hardly publicly condemns the numerous serious human rights abuses constantly associated with the two Chinese companies operating in Talensi.
In his letter to the IGP, the paramount chief claimed that Polo did not have the license and the permit required to mine. He cited this as his first reason for telling the police to ignore the court order.
The paramount chief also stated that Polo surrendered his concession to the Chinese company and received a compensation package from the company as some other concessionaires did.
He went on to claim that the small-scale miner had uttered some insulting remarks against the Talensi Traditional Council and he stated that Polo was on trial for possessing “illegal weapons”.
The Tongraan further stated in the letter that Polo was also facing trial for transporting two people to a fetish priest who killed them with a concoction on allegations of witchcraft.
He also claimed that the small-scale miner had made several attempts to invade Gban with “unauthorised persons” and that the invasion could have resulted in a bloody clash but for the intervention of the Chief of Gban, Elijah Nab Pardnyuun.
“In view of the above disrespect and disregard for the law and the Traditional Council, Zongdan Boayak Kolog and Nanlamtaaba Enterprise cannot be allowed to do small scale mining in Talensi Land since their presence would be a threat to the peace and security of the area.
“We therefore urge you not to grant him any police protection to go into his so-called mining concession which is within the large scale mining area of Earl Mining Company,” the Tongraan stated.
NAPAIC-Ghana writes to IGP to dismiss Tongraan’s ‘contemptuous’ letter
The National Patriots against Injustice and Corruption Ghana (NAPAIC-Ghana) was among the civil society organisations that suspected Tongraan as the architect of the violent attack visited on Justice Graham in 2023.
The anti-graft organisation has responded to the paramount chief’s letter to the IGP, entreating the IGP in a counter letter dated 5th March, 2026, to dismiss the Tongraan’s letter “with the contempt it deserves”.
NAPAIC-Ghana affirmed that the Tongraan had no locus to tell the police to ignore a court order, and the organisation described his letter as a ploy to create “fear and panic” as usual of him.
Responding to the first claim made by the chief, the organisation stated that Polo’s concession (Nanlamtaaba Enterprise) was a legal entity, fully licensed and permitted by state regulatory bodies to mine.
It also rubbished the second claim, asking the paramount chief to provide evidence that Polo handed over his concession (Nanlamtaaba Enterprise) to the Chinese company and evidence that he was compensated.
The organisation stated that the chief’s claim that Polo insulted the traditional council was false, and it condemned the chief’s portrayal of Polo in his letter as an already-guilty accused person charged with illegal possession of weapons and undeserving of police protection to do a legitimate mining business.
NAPAIC-Ghana said it found the portrayal not only “contemptuous” but also “ridiculous”.
In its final response, the organisation said the two final claims made by the chief were prejudicial and rooted in his personal hatred towards the small-scale miner. It further hinted at plans to support Polo to file a lawsuit and a motion for contempt of court against the paramount chief for his “unsubstantiated and contemptuous” comments respectively .
“Sir, we can assure you that Tongraan Kugbilsong Nanlebegtang is only sounding his well-known false alarm as usual to create fear and panic out of personal hatred for Zongdan Boyak Kolog. Zongdan Boyak Kolog is a peace-loving, honourable royal and native of Talensi.
“Following the above cases in point and our responses, we humbly request that you dismiss the letter from Tongraan Kugbilsong Nanlebegtang and execute the order from the High Court as required by law,” NAPAIC-Ghana told the IGP in the letter signed by the Head of Communications, Tii-roug Zumah Yaro.
NAPAIC-Ghana similarly forwarded copies of its response to the same entities the paramount chief copied his own letter to, and it added five more recipients to its copy list.
Several members of the public have said the police would be risking being cited for contempt of court should they ignore the judge’s order and follow the paramount chief’s “hate-fuelled” claims.
Many are following the case and are gearing up for another possible contempt-of-court case against the paramount chief over the disapproval letter he wrote as the High Court resumes hearing on the case between Polo and the Chinese company on Tuesday, 10 March 2026.
Some of those following the case initially were not really sure that the paramount chief was backing the Chinese company against Polo until they saw the disapproval letter he wrote to the IGP.
Now, their doubt is over.
Source: Edward Adeti/Media Without Borders/mwbonline.org/Ghana/West Africa
