Nana Kwame Bediako, the businessman-turned-politician everyone knows as Cheddar, has lost physical control
of his flagship No. 1 Oxford Street Hotel in Osu. A court-appointed Receiver took possession of the building
on Thursday, July 23, 2026, after a legal battle with his business partner Azad Cola that's been building
for months.
The short answer to "what happened": Cola's company, Cola Holdings Ltd, claims it personally repaid an IFC
loan the two men used to build the hotel, and it wants that money back from their joint company. Bediako
says Cola made that move without his consent and has never produced proof he actually repaid the loan. A UK
court has already sided with Cola. Ghana's courts are now enforcing that ruling - while Bediako fights back
with an appeal filed the same day the building changed hands.
The hotel is owned by Kensington Residential Partners 1 Limited (KRP1 Ltd), a company held in equal shares
by Bediako and Cola as its only two directors. It opened in December 2019, and then COVID hit. Revenue
couldn't keep up with servicing the IFC facility that helped fund construction.
While management was reportedly still negotiating a restructuring with IFC, Cola Holdings wrote to KRP1
claiming Azad Cola had personally repaid the loan in full and demanded reimbursement for that amount.
Bediako's camp says that's the whole problem - as a director, Cola had a fiduciary duty to disclose and get
approval before making that kind of move, and to date, neither Cola nor Cola Holdings has produced evidence
the loan was actually repaid.
The dispute already went before the High Court of England and Wales, which ruled against Bediako and ordered
him to pay more than US$14.9 million plus interest and costs to Cola Holdings Ltd - a judgment reported in
January 2026. That set up everything that followed in Accra.
On Tuesday, July 21, 2026, Ghana's Commercial Division of the High Court granted a warrant allowing Cola
Holdings and its appointed Receiver, Nii Amanor Dodoo, to get police assistance to take possession of the
hotel. Two days later, on Thursday, the Receiver did exactly that. A notice painted directly on the
building's wall read "Possession Taken by Court Order 23/07/26."
But Bediako isn't done. Later that same Thursday afternoon, he and KRP1's management filed an appeal against
the High Court order, along with applications for interim relief pending the appeal's outcome. Their
argument: the order isn't even enforceable yet, because the court rules give a seven-day window before it
takes effect - a window that, they say, hasn't expired.
Cola Holdings is reportedly also pursuing the same repayment sum from Bediako personally in a separate,
parallel case - meaning it's chasing the same money from both the company and the man. Whether that amounts
to double-dipping is now a live legal question, not a settled one, as of July 23, 2026.
This is a live case study in what happens when Ghanaian-registered property gets tangled up in foreign-court
judgments - the same IFC-style financing structure a lot of local hospitality and real estate projects lean
on. When a UK ruling lands, Ghanaian courts can and will enforce it here, police assistance included,
regardless of how loud the local appeal gets.
Cheddar spent 2024 building a national profile around youth empowerment and business strength through his
New Force movement. Watching his own signature building get physically seized - with a court order painted
on the wall for everyone walking past Danquah Circle to see - is the kind of optics no political comeback
survives without addressing head-on.