As a follow-up to the STOP PRESS published in this medium on Tuesday, 24 September, 2024, titled “Deputy Ambassador Fatmata Sawaneh named in land grabbing fiasco”, Nightwatch promised to mount an investigation into the alleged land grabbing fiasco levied against the Deputy Ambassador, by her compatriot and SLPP comrade, Madam Umu Jalloh.
The land grabbing allegation has become worrisome and nauseating because of the fact that state security personnel are being surreptitiously employed and deployed by Madam Sawaneh to ensure that Madam Jalloh is consistently harassed and pushed away from her structures; a shop with a retaining wall that has reached wall-height that has been demolished by these illegally retained security personnel said to be under the direct command and control of one Colonel A.R. Bah.
What is of more concern also is the fact that the personal safety of Madam Jalloh is now under constant threat as she is being continuously harassed and intimidated by the army and police personnel detailed on Madam Sawaneh’s grabbed land. “I hardly go closer to my site, where I had being quite earlier than Madam Sawaneh and I have constructed a concrete retaining wall and constructed a shop that had gone up to wall height,” Madam Jalloh lamented, pointing out that whenever she attempts going to the site which has now been claimed by the Deputy Ambassador of Sierra Leone to the Republic of Guinea, “I am ordered by the securities to leave with immediate effect,” Madam Jalloh stated. Colonel A. R. Bah of the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF), Nightwatch is informed, is directing the grabbing of the said plot of land Madam Sawaneh is claiming and also providing protection for the same piece of land from its original owners.
Nightwatch investigators discovered that the armed officers whose salaries are paid by taxpayers’ money from the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) are protecting a land being hotly grabbed by the former Women’s Leader of the ruling Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP), and which according to information; Madam Fatmata Sawaneh has no legitimate ownership over. It must be recalled that in the latest reshuffle of his government, President Julius Maada Bio appointed Madam Sawaneh as Deputy Ambassador to the Republic of Guinea, a position it would appear, she is weirdly using to grab land and intimidate ordinary citizens.
Nightwatch has discovered that the said land being allegedly confiscated by Madam Sawaneh is a private property located at Forest Compound near Number 2 River. A Nightwatch investigation reveals that two of the army personnel providing security for Madam Sawaneh are Army Engineers; a Sergeant and a Corporal in the employ of Ambassador Sawaneh as her building contractors for the structure she is constructing on the disputed land. During the night, Nightwatch investigation reveals, there is an armed OSD officer that patrols the perimeter of the said land to keep off people.
Meanwhile Nightwatch has discovered that neither Ambassador Sawaneh nor Umu Jalloh own the land that is being fought over. The said land is reportedly owned by a certain Macauley Family whose authority and authenticity over the said stretch of land dates as far as 1976. Following series of grabbing on the said stretch of land, the matter was taken to court and a Judge had imposed an injunction on all construction works on the said land, an order, Nightwatch is reliably informed about, that is being flouted and disregarded by Deputy Ambassador Sawaneh and other with her illegal and contemptuous use of state security personnel to guarantee her ownership and continuation of her on-going construction work.
The question Nightwatch and concerned members of the public are asking is: Why do we have military and police officers who are being paid by taxpayers’ money are providing security an illegally usurped property and championing the destruction of another land-grabber on the same disputed stretch of land? Deputy Ambassador Madam Fatmata Sawaneh and Madam Umu Jalloh are both by law, not legally entitled to the said of land which the Deputy Ambassador, is using state power and resources to lay claims on by force. She has caused the destruction of Umu Jalloh’s structures erected on a 120 ft stretch of the disputed land and also causing her arbitrary arrests and detentions severally for being on the stretch of land she is also claiming.
Meanwhile, some of the state security personnel on duty at the grabbed Madam Sawaneh stretch of land have intimated Nightwatch that in spite of “all the crude works we are doing for this SLPP Big Woman, we have gone for a couple of months without being paid anything,” one of the officers grumbled, while another muted that they don’t know whether their pay for Madam Sawaneh’s works are being passed on to Colonel Bah and he is not giving them.
However, given all of the drama Madam Sawaneh and his surrogates state security personnel are showing over this stretch of land in question, the Macauley Family have officially reached out to Nightwatch confirming their rightful ownership of the said land and that as it is now, Madam Umu Jalloh is in discussions with the family to officially grant her access and ownership of the plot of land she was working on.
Nightwatch continues to keep watch on developments and will keep the public and our readers updated on this on-going saga and how is possibly would be resolved between Madam Fatmata Sawaneh and the Macauley Family on one hand, and Madam Umu Jalloh and the Macauley Family on the other. Keeping buying and reading Nightwatch Newspaper for details.