Latent land ownership issues have been surfacing since the sacking of former Lands Minister, Dr. Denis Sandy. On the 26th of February, the Vice Principal of the Lorenzo Gorvie Memorial Senior Secondary School and several students of the school found themselves in the Waterloo Police Station cells for all the wrong reasons.
The incarceration was a result of an attempt by an interloper, one Sulaiman Abu Jalloh, to carry out construction on land they considered lawful school property. During the fracas, Sulaiman Jalloh offered a large sum of money to the students, which they rejected. The police arrived on the scene and, after some scuffles during which students were injured, took some of them to their station where they were placed in police cells. Others were taken to the Waterloo Health Centre.
The legitimacy of the school’s occupation, of the land, is that in 1974 it got the permission of the government in power to lease the land that belonged to the Sierra Leone Railway some of whose classrooms are still being used by the school. Decades after came one Wallace-Johnson who claimed part of the land, that was earmarked for the building of more classrooms to accommodate students for the one shift system.
During Dr. Denis Sandy’s tenure of office a team from Surveys and Lands, headed by him, made an inspection tour of the land and demarcations of the school’s area were made. In connection with this issue, a public meeting was held at the Local Council hall at which Minister Sandy took the opportunity to spell out his new land policy.
In a bid to fast track the process of signing the survey plan, Le800,000,000 (eight hundred million Leones) was handed over to the acting Director of Surveys and Lands, Tamba Dauda, requested by Minister Sandy without being receipted. It is learnt from reliable survey that the land was sold to Sulaiman Bah for the purpose of establishing a gas station while hundreds of students will be left in the cold for want of accommodation.
In an interview with the principal of the school, Mr. James Dawodu, he lamented that government could concede for such valuable land, contiguous with the school premises, to be acquired for commercial purposes. He said that he had no vested interest in the land. “All my effort is for the public good. I am content with my own land,” he averred.