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Participants in a public lecture in Accra on compulsorily acquired lands have described the Supreme Court ruling in the case brought against Mr Jake Obetsebi- Lamptey for his acquisition of a government bungalow as a breach of trust. The group, made up of legal experts, ministers of state and interest groups, expressed disgust at public officers using their positions to acquire public lands for private use and said any land acquired for public use must be put to the use for which it was acquired. The lecture, on the topic: �Public interest and public purpose versus private interests: Reflections on the Supreme Court�s decisions�, was organised by the Ga-Dangme Council. Leading the discussion, a legal practitioner, Mr Bright Akwetey, said the Lands Commission had no right to allocate public lands to any private individual �for his private purpose, his private advantage or his private benefits�. According to him, it was mandatory that the purpose must be for public use. Breach of trust The President or the Lands Commission, he said, was, therefore, in breach of his duty as a trustee because the allocation to Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey was done in excess of the powers conferred on the President. Mr Akwetey submitted that the allocation of the land, which was held in trust on behalf of all Ghanaians, to Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey, was wrongful in law and the La Mantse was, therefore, clothed with the powers to trace the land and recover it, �even in a changed form�. He said the principle of equity required that Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey should have investigated the trustee�s title before taking the land, stressing that if the investigation had been done, the trust would have been revealed. �Private land is never compulsorily acquired for a stated public purpose, only to be diverted to private use, notwithstanding the payment of royalties, rents or other outgoings by the private beneficiary,� he stressed. He said unless the purpose for which the land was acquired was amended, the land in dispute could not be allocated for any other purpose. Malignant tumour Contributing, the Minister of Communications, Dr Edward Omane-Boamah, described the Supreme Court ruling on the case involving Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey as a �malignant tumour� sitting in the law books which needed to be removed. �I believe a surgeon in the Supreme Court will one day remove this malignant tumour for us, leaving the healthy tissues,� he said, to wild applause. Dr Boamah assured the gathering that under President John Dramani Mahama, no minister would be permitted to purchase any state bungalow and recalled that under the late President John Evans Atta Mills, some state acquired lands were reversed to their original owners. For his part, a deputy minister of Education in charge of Tertiary Education, Mr Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, said the discussion was a national issue that should be devoid of political and ethnic colouration.