Lands Ministry accused of stealing Private Land At Tokeh Village

Since he assumed the capacity as Lands Minister, Turad Senesie has been finding pleasure stepping on the toes of Sierra Leoneans living in the Diaspora.

The Minister’s recent tactics is to hide under the cloak of land reclamation to take undue advantage over the property of Sierra Leoneans residing in the diaspora.

The Minister has been doing it with ease, and one such person that he has taken undue advantage of is Alpha Conteh, a Sierra Leonean based in the United States of America.

Alpha and his family purchased  acres of land at Tokeh Village in 2019. Before purchasing the land, the Conteh Family did a background check to ascertain the authenticity of the land and its ownership from the Ministry of Lands, who, in turn, gave them the greenlight that the land in question was a private property that belonged to the then Tokeh Headman, Alhaji Slowe.

All documentation were verified before the land deal was successfully done between Alhaji Slowe and the Conteh Family.

A year after the deal, the Conteh Family was approached by one official in the Ministry of Lands, Mr. Noah, who told him emphatically that the land in question is a state property, and even suggesting to him to give him half of the property to strike a compromise.

Alpha Conteh refused to dance to the tunes of Mr. Noah, who later incorporated his team from the Ministry, including the Minister, to destroy the erected perimeter fence of the Conteh property, costing millions of Leones. The Ministry dispossessed the land from the Conteh family and distributed it to several individuals, some of whom have started putting up protective structures on the land.

Speaking to Alpha Conteh, a claimant and a Sierra Leonean based in United States, explained all that transpired when he purchased the land in 2019, including when he was approached by someone at the Ministry of Lands a year after the land deal, down to the latest development.

Alpha explained that when he had the information that his land is a state property, he immediately traveled to Sierra Leone to straighten things and produced his document to clear the doubts.

Upon arriving in Sierra Leone and meeting with the Minister, Alpha submitted his land document for perusal,  but the Minister refused to countenance it, and instead told him to his face that: “all lands in Sierra Leone are state lands, unless it was granted to you by government”.

After that fruitless endeavor, the Minister reclaimed the Conteh family land and distributed it to certain individuals, suspected of paying hefty money for possession of the property.

Recently, this press mounted an investigation to know the latest about the land in question, after making several attempts to get in touch with the Minister on the subject under investigation. It became glaringly clear that the Minister has distributed the land to several individuals, alleged to have close connections to the powers that be. The land was distributed to high ranking police officers and big guns in this Government, thereby depriving the Conteh family of their legitimate property.

The beneficiaries are erecting permanent structures on the land, with pictorial evidence showing various building projects and materials already being transported to the sites.

The matter has been brought to Court by the Conteh family to challenge the decision of the Lands Minister, and buyers of the Conteh family land are advised to think twice.