News on Land

EMEKA ELEH is a past president, Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) and a principal partner at Ubosi Eleh and Company. In this interview with BERTRAM NWANNEKANMA, he spoke on the imperative of land titling, challenges of inaccurate data and other issues in the real estate sector.

• Sierra Leone is among the poorest countries in the world. In the 1990s, when other African countries were privatizing key industries in order to attract foreign investment and become eligible for international loans, a civil war was raging in Sierra Leone that prevented the country from taking part in the controversial structural adjustment programs initiated by the World Bank and the Inter-national Monetary Fund.

Executive Director of the Centre for Women in Agriculture and Nutrition (C-WAN), Emmanuel Wullingdool, has appealed to the government to create agricultural land banks to enable the vulnerable groups in society to have access to fertile land for farming purposes.

He said the vulnerable groups, including women, could register with the government at the district levels to acquire those productive lands to farm.

The government, through the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, has advised individuals and investors interested in acquiring lands in the Voltaian Basin to contact the Lands Commission for guidance and assistance.

“Any individual, private or public establishment, be it local or foreign, intending to acquire land in the subject area for any developmental land-use activity is required to contact the Lands Commission Secretariat in the region where the land is situated or Head Office of the Lands Commission in Accra,” it said in a statement.

A war is brewing in Agudama-Epie community in Yenagoa Local Government Area, Bayelsa State, over moves by the Central Naval Command (CNC), Nigerian Navy, to demolish buildings around its headquarters, known as Camp Porbeni. Until 2013, Camp Porbeni was the cynosure of all eyes when entering Yenagoa because its alluring environment had been used by the Nigerian Army to accommodate its top officers and by Julius Berger as residential quarters for its management staff.

The steering team of the Ghana Gold Expo has issued a press briefing that the premiere issue of the Ghana Gold Report 2020 will be released on June 15, 2020.

The steering team is led by Dr Steven Blessing Ackah and MP for Takoradi, Kwabena Okyere Darko Mensah.

The Siem Reap provincial Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries called on citizens to stop stealing forest land belonging to the state. It said village, commune and district authorities should cooperate to protect forest land in the province.

Department director Tea Kimsoth told The Post on Monday that forest land managed by the Forestry Administration and residents in Siem Reap spanned over 30,000ha. The forests have an abundance of high-grade Cambodian timber.

Urban land rights NGO Sahmakum Teang Tnaut released a research document on Monday showing a slowdown in land evictions in the capital, but said there was little evidence the process was improving or following human rights standards.

The family also accused the Babajide Sanwo-Olu-led government of Lagos of acting outside of legal provisions by demolishing their properties.

The Elejigbo family of Lamgbasa community in Eti-Osa Local Government Area of Lagos has accused the state government of demolishing their property at Silverpoint Estate for the purpose of acquiring the land and selling to wealthy individuals.

The family also accused the Babajide Sanwo-Olu-led government of Lagos of acting outside of legal provisions by demolishing their properties.

Oknha Sorng Thorn, the owner of 5,000ha which covers a fourth of Koas Krala district in Battambang province, was taken in for questioning by the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) on Saturday in regards to corruption allegations.

In a move that civil society organisation Adhoc does not believe to be related to Thorn’s case, Prime Minister Hun Sen issued a sub-decree ending Mao Sochan’s tenure as Koas Krala district governor.

Fires have spread across the majority of the landscape in Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Fires of this number are not uncommon at this time of year in Africa. During the agricultural season of clearing field and planting new ones, farmers set fire to the remains of old crop fields to rid them of the leftover grasses and scrub.

• Mbonjo sits in the heart of Cameroon’s country’s largest oil palm and rubber-producing region. In 2000, state-owned oil palm plantations around the village were acquired by Société Financière des Caoutchoucs (Socfin), a Belgian holding company that operates palm oil and rubber plantations through dozens of subsidiaries across Africa and Southeast Asia.