By Prince J. Musa
Through the Land for Life Initiative Sierra Leone, the NGO, Network Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD), has on the 10th March 2021 started a capacity building training for multi-stakeholders as a way of empowering them to mitigate land disputes at district and chiefdom levels.
The training, held at the organization’s headquarters in Kenema, brought together other civil society organizations working on land-related matters, human right officers, legal organizations, community stakeholders on land ownership among others.
In her opening statement, the program manager NMJD east Ima Patricia Amara told the participants that the essence of bringing them together was to capacitate them and broaden their knowledge on how to probe into land conflicts at both chiefdoms and community levels because “we know that land has now become a serious point of conflict among people.”
She said that the project aims at ensuring that land is used by the people, investors and other development partners to impact the lives of the people.
The district facilitator, Land for Life Initiative who doubles as the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, NMJD Aiah Charles Jabba said the initiative is a new one introduced to address land-related matters in that parts of the country. He said his project is operating in four districts Kenema, Port Loko, Tonkolili and Pujehun through five implementing partners of which NMJD is the lead.
Mr. Jabba said, the project is geared towards giving the people their fundamental rights over their land and how to utilize their land to benefit them and contribute to their livelihood development. He explained that over the period, a lot of problems have been associated with land acquisition, as most multi-national investment companies go into agreement with the land owners but fail to fulfill their Corporate Social Responsibility leading to conflict between the companies and the people.
He said, the project was able to map out chiefdoms that are prominent in land disputes within Kenema district and that during the survey, chiefdoms, such as Lower Bambara, Dama and Small Bo were noted as areas with some serious land issues.
One of the participants from lower Bambara chiefdom Bobson George Nabieu told the gathering that their people have been deprived of their land by the Sierra Diamond Company in Niawa section in Lower Bambara chiefdom. He said: “All the conditions that the company promised to meet failed and our people are not allowed to enter their land including the swamp which was alternative for farming”.
Nabieu accused the chiefdom authorities of conniving with the company to defraud the people and that it’s against that backdrop that as communities, they decided to organize and go back on the drawing board.
Copyright © 2021 Politico Online 12/03/21
