A simmering legal tussle over who holds the right to perform the funeral rites for the late highlife musician Daddy Lumba has taken a new turn, with the musician’s first wife, Mrs. Akosua Serwah Fosuh, refusing to back down.
In a letter dated Saturday, November 1, 2025, now circulating online, Mrs. Fosuh has reiterated her claim to be the sole person legally entitled to conduct the widowhood rites for her late husband. She maintains that neither family heads nor relatives in Ghana can take charge of such customs.
Addressing Ladyship Justice Dorinda Smith Arthur through her attorney, Mr. William Kusi, Esq., Mrs. Fosuh argued that her late husband should be treated under German legal frameworks due to his citizenship status.
She reminded the court that Daddy Lumba was no longer Ghanaian at the time of his death, stating that “her late husband was a German citizen, not a Ghanaian, and therefore the rights over his remains and funeral arrangements lie under German jurisdictional principles, vested in his lawful spouse and children.”
Mrs. Fosuh’s letter lays out detailed steps of Daddy Lumba’s renunciation of his Ghanaian citizenship. She says the musician applied for German citizenship in 2000, secured it, and in 2002 formally forfeited his Ghanaian identity by filing official paperwork through the Embassy of Ghana.
She further asserted that the issuing of the Certificate of Renunciation in 2002 ended his recognition under Ghanaian customary law, meaning he no longer had ties that would place his burial within traditional family control.
She pointed to German civil law which, she said, gives full authority over funeral decisions to the surviving spouse and children. In her words, it would be inappropriate “for my husband to have been recognized as a German citizen during his lifetime, traveling globally on a German passport, yet to be treated as a Ghanaian subject to customary control only upon his death.”
Her stance comes shortly after the Kumasi High Court dismissed her injunction request to halt Daddy Lumba’s funeral set for December 6, 2025. With the injunction denied, the late musician’s family, led by Mr. Kofi Owusu, the Abusuapanin, is now clear to proceed with preparations.
Read the letter below.
