PART 2
By Times SL undercover reporter
As a follow-up on our last edition on this matter, it is becoming clearer by the day that a cabal exists at the Lands Ministry that has been involved in the conversion of private land to state property, allegedly with the blessings of the Minister, whose reluctance to dig into complaints raised by citizens over alleged interference with their land in the name of repossession of state land.
Our investigations revealed that certain individuals, parading under the protection of the Minister of Lands, have invariably plunged the institution’s good name into disrepute, thereby tarnishing the progressive development of the government of President Bio. Complaints abound over issues of unlawful dispossession of private land by those officials with the blessings of the Minister, under the guise of repossession of State Land. Despite those complaints, little has been done by the Minister to rectify the situation and return the said lands to their rightful owners, even when it is abundantly clear that the said lands are registered in the books of the Ministry and at the Registrar General’s books at Roxy Building. His failure to address those concerns renders registration of land in the ministry and at the Registrar’s office merely a farce.
It should be noted that even in legal matters concerning Land issues, the Court takes into account the registration of title at the Registrar’s office. The current disposition of the minister to discountenance those registration documents, as well as its own records, sends a worrying message that private lands are not safe.
Among the many cases investigated by this medium is one Alpha Conteh, who stays in New York, United States of America. Mr Conteh is said to have legally bought 4 acres of land at Tokeh Village from one Alhaji Slowe. Before acquiring the land, Conteh took all the necessary steps to check with the respective government agencies in charge of land acquisition, including the Lands Ministry, ensuring that due diligence was done, and was able to confirm that the land in question was a private property.
Unfortunately, after some few years, one Mr. Noah, an official at the Ministry, approached Conteh’s family in Freetown demanding that some acres of the said land be surrendered to the Ministry. This was stoutly resisted by Conteh and his family, who had the conviction that Noah was being used to illegally and unlawfully take possession of their land at Tokeh. As if that was not enough, Noah succeeded in convincing Minister Turad Senesie to believe that the land in question was state land, without any supporting documentary evidence to back his claim. Today, Minister Turad Senessie has taken possession of the land and has given it to one Jabbie, who is well known for doing illegal land deals at the Lands Ministry. Citizens are calling on the Anti-Corruptiom Commission to turn its lens at the Lands Ministry, where they will see overwhelming evidence of corruption cases on land acquisition and the sale of private lands. They are demanding that President Bio call Minister Turad Senesie to book and put him under serious enquiries in respect of several private lands claimed as state land that have been sold to other buyers, otherwise, the Minister will end up messing up his government, as in the case of previous ministers who have headed that ministry before. The question being asked is why in the first place did the Ministry, under the watch of Turad Senessie, decide to sell the illegally seized land to Jabbie?
Times SL later understood that Noah, the architect of corrupt land deals at the Lands Ministry, has been transferred to the provinces, after he had allegedly connived with some officials at the ministry to illegally take possession of land belonging to somebody close to the wife of the President. It was that land saga that caused Minister Turad Senesie to believe that all Noah has been doing in the past was a calculated ploy to pollute and corrupt him and his office, under the guise of reclaiming state lands.
Mr Alpha Conteh is one among thousands of Sierra Leoneans suffering in silence at the hands of the ministry. There are a good number of citizens who have been crying down the same ministry and the Minister for similar actions against them. This is a test case for the ACC.
See more details in our subsequent editions