4.3.1. Satisfaction with Local Dispute Resolution Mechanisms

Given that respondents in both study areas expressed a high preference for traditional over statutory mechanisms of land dispute resolution, it was instructive to further ascertain the extent to which respondents perceived customary mechanisms to be effective in land dispute resolution. Respondents were therefore asked about whether they were satisfied with the local dispute mechanisms in their respective communities, the results of which are shown in Tables 4 and 5.


**Table 4.** Satisfaction with local dispute resolution mechanisms by ethnicity.

\*\* significant at *p* ≤ 0.05;


**Table 5.** Satisfaction with local dispute resolution mechanisms by gender.

From Table 4, it is quite clear that respondents were generally satisfied with the customary dispute resolution mechanisms in the study areas. In Ankasa, however, a comparatively lower proportion of migrants (57%) as against indigenes (83%) expressed satisfaction with traditional adjudicatory mechanisms (*p* < 0.05; *χ*<sup>2</sup> = 8.01), which perhaps suggests their waning confidence in traditional authorities as impartial arbiters in land dispute resolution. Corroborating this assertion is a typical remark by a migrant farmer in Ankasa:

*'If you are a settler farmer here and you have an issue over land with a Nzema [indigene], it is likely that the decision by the traditional authorities would favour your opponent due to his ethnicity. In the eyes of the chiefs, you, the stranger, cannot profess stronger ties to the land than the indigene as you only came to make a living* ... *'.(Interview 1, Ankasa, June 2015)*

Elsewhere in south-western Ghana, Boone and Duku [59] and Boni [60] reported the incidence of landlord–migrant disputes ostensibly aggravated by local adjudicatory mechanisms operating to favour native landlords at the expense of migrant–tenant farmers.
