By Joseph Lamin Kamara in Pujehun
Politico has unearthed long hidden truths in the land transaction involving the government of Sierra Lone, landowners in Sahn Malen Chiefdom in the southern Pujehun District, and the Socfin Agricultural Company, a Luxembourg-registered company, which is part of the French-owned Socfin Group.
The mostly poor illiterate landowners have apparently been kept in the dark about how 12,000 hectares of their lands were acquired by Socfin. The landowners are also receiving as payment what is grossly disproportionate to what they ought to be earning for their inheritances, which sustained them without much instability until government took the company there.
The coming of Socfin should be a blessing to the entire Pujehun District, but the blessing seems to be savoured by authorities who don’t actually deserve it. And the people have been full of widespread discontent towards the foreign investors and hatred for their own brothers and sisters who are employed by the company.
In January, this year, a Belgian and a Zimbabwean working for the company were attacked and shot in the chiefdom. 11 arrests by police were made, and those arrested included an elected councilor.
In 2011 Socfin signed an agreement to enable it acquires the vast area for oil palm plantation. The company has already completed utilizing the land. It has planted the biggest oil processing mill in West Africa, which processes 60, 000 tons of palm fruits per hour.
In a contested 50-year lease agreement Socfin has already started producing crude oil, after planting in 2012.
Akwasi Adu-Boahen, a hired Ghanaian mechanical engineer, who manages the mill, said production started in March and they sell in large tonnages. One ton costs between Le750, 000 ($150) and Le1m ($200). Adu-Boahen said if they started large scale production Sierra Leone couldn’t consume all their produce so they hoped to sell overseas.
Lack of trust
The company signed to invest $112m; its officials say it will require minimum timeframe of 10 years to recover that that investment.
The landowners though say they were not ready to offer their lands, and that they only acquiesced for two reasons.
“We gave our lands because we love our paramount chief. And we gave our lands when he said because he thought our community was underdeveloped, he had brought the company that would give us jobs. He said our children, our wives, and, even if we were ready, would have jobs,” said Junisa Jusu, Town Speaker for Sinjo Village, in an interview with Politico.
Jusu said it was only the Paramount Chief who had approached them to give their lands to the company. The septuagenarian said Sinjo was one of the first villages that offered their lands, but noted that now their children who had been employed by the company had been “dismissed.”
The people cannot tell the number of hectares or acres, or even town lots, they gave out, but they say their own plot is a massive one. The Sinjo Town Speaker revealed that of a total of 66 villages in Sahn Malen Chiefdom, only four villages remained where Socfin did not have land.
It was an interview I was having with the landowners, but it turned out to be a forum where the people thought their problem would be addressed. One man would not speak alone. He called the Town Speaker who represented the Town Chief. The Speaker called members of his council, and they called their wives and those who had been adversely hit by the Socfin land transaction.
Speaking with the hope that I had come as the messiah, Mohamed Lebbie, a Quranic teacher, one of the aggrieved landowners, said when their lands were being taken, Socfin did not pay for their bushes, but only where there were palm trees.
No matter how vast your land was, it was taken, and no matter how many people were in your household, a household of landowners were given Le1m [$200] each per year,” Lebbie explained.
“That money is very small, for something that we used to solve all our problems with,” He yelled.
According the Sinjo Town Speaker, all those plots of land acquired by Socfin came from seven households, who received their money from the Paramount Chief.
Amidst that anger for Socfin which has culminated in many non-cooperative actions against and attacks on the company, the people would later on in the interview develop a strong sense of cynicism and hopelessness.
Teacher Lebbie said a lot of people, from journalists to civil society groups, had met with them. “But no sooner had they all left us and entered the office of the General Manager of Socfin than they all kept mute on the issue,” he said.
The women and old ladies sitting in wooden chairs, on railings and benches in the veranda of Teacher Lebbie`s house, and the others standing around, would chorus the same complaint later, rising and moving.
“Even you who are sitting there, we just leave you with God, but we don’t trust anyone anymore,” Lebbie added, pointing at me, walking out.
Living in delusion
Socfin is helping develop Sahn Malen. It is constructing toilets and court houses [barrays], and building and repairing hospitals, among others; but many people in the chiefdom don’t appreciate them. Those are the people who themselves and their relatives are not being employed by the company, and they receive the Le1m per year for their land.
Such is the delusion the landowners are living in; their attitude tells that it was Socfin that took their lands from them, and it must therefore ensure that what they receive in return should at least be proportionate to the value of their inheritances. But it was not Socfin that directly took their lands from them. It was their government.
The company did not just come and connive with the paramount chief and take their lands from them for paltry sums.
“The structure is, the Ministry of Agriculture was always involved, because the whole approach was through the Ministry of Agriculture. So in the negotiation the Ministry of Agriculture made the lease agreement with the chiefdom and the company had a sublease with the government. So that’s why we always keep the government involved,” Philip Tonks, General Manager of Socfin, told Politico at his Sahn Malen office.
What has never been said to the landowners and most people in Sahn Malen Chiefdom and Pujehun District in the land deal would come out in that interview.
I wanted to understand the nitty-gritty of a land transaction that has come with widespread dissatisfaction among poor illiterate landowners and a lot of unrests in the southern district chiefdom.
And the company’s door was open to an amazing extent. The interview revealed that when Socfin came it first met government which, according to the general manager, made a lease agreement between the landowners and itself. It then in turn leased the land to the company.
By law therefore, Socfin is not really obligated to the landowners, but the government.
The company is spending a total of $224,000 (Le1.12bn) per year, as lease payment.
In the interview with the Socfin general manager and a separate one with the Pujehun District Officer, Andrew Jones Fofanah, it became apparent that it was government who determined that 50% of the land lease payment should be given to the landowners, 20% to the District Council, another 20% to the chiefdom, and 10% to government.
Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security, Dr Joseph Sam Sesay, whom I spoke to by phone on the line to Freetown, told me that they had agreed that the landowners would be paid $5 (Le25, 000) for one acre.
The minister defended government’s role in the highly hijacked land deal, stressing that they wanted a smooth business operation between foreigners and the natives. That’s why, he confirmed, government took the people’s lands from them on lease and later subleased them to Socfin.
The minister would however not talk further, saying he was busy. And so this quote I got from him is so vague one: “That’s the arrangement, to make sure that those people don’t disturb them.”
Dr Sesay would later in that short interview refer me to Aiah Thorlie, the Head of Agribusiness Promotion at the ministry who he (minister) said was dealing with the issue. But Thorlie also declined answering all my questions – about even the amount they were receiving from Socfin for the landowners.
“I have to look at a document of about 45 pages before I can talk and I’m currently in Makeni, busy,” he said on phone. He would not stop at that. He attempted to persuade me from publishing the report.
Agent of chaos
What has however been difficult to track has been the total number of households of landowners involved in the deal. While the Sinjo authorities say there are just seven, General Manager Philip Tonks said he could not exactly say, at the time how many households of landowners, but said there were hundreds of them. The general manager also said their plantation covered 58 villages in the chiefdom.
While Socfin cannot – and I understand why – tell whether the landowners had at least a lawyer at the signing of the lease “agreement”, Paramount Chief Victor Kebbie II, went radical with me when presented with the question.
PC Kebbie II, also a Member of Parliament representing all other paramount chiefs in the district, was especially emotional, referring me to government after I had asked what agreements there were between the government and his people, if ever there was, and between Socfin and the government. He declined to say how many households of landowners there were on whose lands Socfin was working. He went on to describe Politico as an agent of chaos, saying the media was determined to spark chaos in his chiefdom
I insisted with the Paramount, who bears the sacred duty of protecting the interests of his people, on whether there were lawyers when the supposed agreements were signed, and his anger grew.
“That is not your business! You are not part of Malen! I’m the Paramount Chief,” he yelled on the phone.
Politico has however been informed by the civil society group Search For Common Ground (SFCG) that in their research and advocacy they`d found out that there were no lawyers when the “agreements” were signed.
The advocacy group has been defending land rights in the districts for many years now.
Socfin says the Paramount Chief is mediating between the landowners and the company and that he`d held a series of meetings with other chiefs in the chiefdom. But the Programme Manager of SFCG, Saa Bandabla, said, the chiefs including the Paramount Chief, were merely custodians of the lands, “not the owners.”
Many landowners, Bandabla said, had cried to them that they did not understand the “agreement” and they`d now lost their livelihoods which used to be through their lands.
The landowners have never been told it was not Socfin that they directly leased their lands to and it was not they who determined what they should be paid for their lands.
SFCG says the $5 paid for one acre of land is very disproportionate to the value which the landowners used to derive farming on that portion of land.
(C) Politico 25/08/15
