Former Ghanaian international Nii Odartey Lamptey has now reclaimed his house in East Legon, Accra, after an Accra High Court ruled to reverse the decision to assign the ownership of the house to his ex wife Gloria Appiah, who sued to own the house as part of compensation she seeks following the failure of their marriage in 2013.
The 47-year old Lamptey and his ex wife Gloria divorced in 2013 after 20 years of marriage, after a DNA results revealed that he was not the biological father of his three children. Lamptey was accused of impotency by Ms Gloria, but the former Black Star midfielder denied the allegations, and insisted that he never asked Gloria to sleep with other men to get pregnant for him.
Following the divorce in 2013, Lamptey gave away his five bedroom house at Dome in addition to a sum of GH₵400,000 to Ms Gloria Appiah (his ex wife) as alimony, but Gloria insisted that she wanted the 7-bedroom house at East Legon instead.
On Monday, July 13, 2020, the Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal filed by Ms Gloria seeking ruling on assigning the ownership of the East Legon property which she was already occupying to her. The court then ordered, after throwing out her appeal, that she did not legally merit the property she seeks to own and that she vacates the house with immediate effect. However, Gloria filed a second appeal to keep the house which was also thrown out again by the court on 16 July 2021.
The legal tussle over the matter has lasted for the past nine (9) years, and now the Accra High Court has finally ruled in Lamptey’s favour and ordered Ms Gloria to vacate the house and handover the property to its rightful owner, Mr Lamptey.
“On the 29th of March I received a call from my lawyers that, by the court’s ruling on the 2nd of March 92022] she [Ms Gloria Appiah] has been given up to one month to handover the keys to the house to me so that I can break into the house. So it was all joy for me after about nine years of battle in court, I think finally I have reclaimed the house”, Odartey Lamptey told Accra based radio, Peace FM in an interview.
Mr Lamptey, according him, has never missed a single one of all the courts sittings since the litigation began, and he feels relieved that the court’s ruling is going to bring a finality to the matter. He also stated, that the current condition of house from pictures he as received from his representatives are not a pleasing one, considering that state of the house before and now, but he believes that what mattered most was for him to win the property back.
The ex Aston Villa man is currently married to former Ghana’s Most Beautiful (GMB) participant, Ruweida Yakubu with whom he has three children of his own, all being girls.
Odartey Lamptey played for the Black Stars between 1991 and 1996, and was part of the Ghana squad that played for the country during the 1992 Olympics. During his playing days, he played for a total of thirteen different clubs in Europe including Aston Villa and other places after a short spell in Ghana.
