For the first time in its more than one hundred year history the Fourah Bay College administration will soon receive documents from the government of Sierra Leone giving it freehold of the more than 400 acre land on which the college stands on Mount Aureol.
The decision was finalised at a meeting between college authorities led by Deputy Vice Chancellor Sahr Gbamanja and Ministry of Lands officials including Lands Minister Musa Tarawallie.
According to Ing. Amadu Barrie of the civil engineering department of Fourah Bay College, who was part of the FBC team, all existing community structures like the market, clinic and petrol station built on FBC land near Leicester Junction would be protected and a further 2.6 acres of the land would be reserved for other such development projects including schools and places of worship. He said the college would frown at any attempt by community people to construct dwelling houses in this reserved area.
Paschal Egbenda, chairman of FBC assets committee, told Politico that they were only waiting for the Ministry of Lands “to do their last job.” This, he said, is the final demarcation of the piece of land to be given to the college and the handing over of the document given the institution the freehold on the property.
Mr Egbenda disclosed that the college had agreed to give out 2.6 acres of land to the surrounding community for community development, including the building of schools and places of worship – churches and mosques.
As a strategy to prevent any further or future encroachment, the college administration intends to building staff quarters along the periphery of the property in question, Egbenda said, adding that financial constraint means a fence can`t be erected around the 400 acre piece of land at this time.
The meeting at Youyi Building concludes a string of other meetings between all sides to the land issue and President Ernest Bai Koroma at State House.
In one of those meetings, the president told the college authorities and representatives of people who had encroached on FBC land that any housing development that obstructed a government project designed to give FBC a facelift should be demolished.
Currently, the college is bracing up for a 36 million dollar major rehabilitation and construction project to be funded by the Arab Bank for Reconstruction and Development (BADEA). Students hostels will be rehabilitated and new classrooms and staff quarters constructed as part of the project.
And students as well as lecturers are very much looking forward to the conclusion of that project which is yet to even commence.
Mr Egbenda wouldn’t tell when the project commences but said it could be by end of next year.
“Generally one would wonder whether the authorities have received the US$32 million package because since 2012 when students were forcefully evicted from the hostels, something should have been done in terms of renovating the existing structures,” said a concerned student, a final year student of the Peace & Conflict Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, who spoke to Politico on condition of anonymity for fear of persecution by the college authorities.
This student said because these structures were depreciating people in the nearby surround communities were busy vandalizing what remains of them.
“The delay has created more harm and is going to cost the university more money to do the renovation. It is high time they start thinking of fencing the whole campus as that it will create some sense of security for both the students and the university staff.”
According to this source, who is a member of one of the concerned groups of students on the FBC campus, the authorities should now take into account the growing number of students and make provision for the next 30 years to come “otherwise in the next three decades the college will be in the same situation of overpopulation with limited facilities.
Another concerned student, Shaku Mansaray, BA general student, said basically the college had not done justice to students.
He said during their orientation they were told that the college had received the US$32m but lamented the fact that there was still no sign of work ongoing.
“If they can`t do the hostels let them start with the lecture rooms because we take class under the sun and what will happen during this raining season,” he said.
Adding: “There may be qualified lecturers but we lack conducive classrooms. Let them create the atmosphere of what a university should be like because things are not too okay here. I would have loved to stay on campus because coming from wellington to this place involves a lot of constrains.”
(C) Politico 14/07/15
