By Chernor Alimamy Kamara
As cases involving land become more rampant in the Western Area, the Sierra Leone Land Alliance has urged the National Land Commission to work with the executive of the affected landowners to conclude the remaining cases.
A Policy brief conducted by Land Alliance titled: “Agony of affected landowners: A case for National Land Commission” was presented to pressmen at the Amnesty International Hall in Freetown on the 7th of February 2024.
The policy which was read to journalists by the Executive Director of the Alliance, John Paul Bai noted that in 2021, institutions were constituted to probe into allegations of land corruption. He stated that all committees or commissions of inquiry whether they are gathering information to help create policy or establishing facts around allegations of wrong doing, seek to inform the government.
“Over time, they have acquired openness in their process and have been used to achieve a variety of ends. Some of these are responding to public pressure, pacifying public anger and outrage, solving policy bottlenecks, or setting political scores,” he said.
He recalled how the complaint committee that was set up by the Minister of Lands, Housing and Country Planning, Dr. Turad Senessie on the 4th of March, 2021 to look into land disputes in the Western Area between the period of April to January 2021 which concluded their assignment by producing a report that expounded on various issues of land grabbing and land dispossession by the former Lands Minister.
He said that the nine-man committee report indicated that Dr. Senessie’s predecessor adopted a divide-and-rule approach amongst citizens in Freetown that created negative dynamics around ethnicity, the consequences of which “are still felt today; and being also responsible for the alienation of large swathes of prime land from affected landowners in the Western Area.”
Executive Director Bai in the brief statement quoted the National Land Commission Act of 2022 which guarantees existing property rights; but simultaneously places the state under a constitutional duty to take reasonable steps to enable citizens to gain equitable access to land, and to promote the security of tenure. The Act he went on, also provides redress to those who were disposed of property since the era of former Minister Dennis Sandy to the present, as a result of past discriminatory laws or corrupt practices, emphasizing that Western Area land disputes represent an injustice that ought to be addressed.
He pointed out that due to the snail-pace in the holistic implementation of the recommendations of the complaint committee report, some affected landowners out of frustration and neglect to secure justice in reclaiming their land, unfortunately died. He recalled another case of one of the affected landowners whose proposition by the Ministry of Lands to replace his land with another land was outrightly rejected.
The Land Alliance Director noted in the brief that the secret release of the Alhaji Mutarda Sesay’s report and the delay in implementing the recommendations contained sends a negative image about the country. He said that several recommendations made by the report would have required an open and high-profile release of the rights of the Committee for them to be implemented successfully.
The brief therefore recommended that traditional dispute resolution mechanisms, be utilized to resolve historical land injustices where the subject matter of the dispute is community land, especially for the peninsular areas. It also recommended that conciliation, mediation, and negotiation be utilized as first steps before the judiciary allows a party to institute a suit on land disputes.
The brief further recommended for the powers of the National Land Commission to be expanded to operate as a quasi-judicial body, with the High Court exercising supervisory jurisdiction.
Sierra Leone Land Alliance is a platform for collective action committed to promoting equitable access, control, and secured ownership of land by the rural, peri-urban, and urban poor and marginalized, through lobbying and advocacy networking, research, and community partnership.
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