Report: Land-grabbers disown their loot…

Elsewhere in this same edition, Fako Senior Divisional Officer, SDO, Zang III claims in a rather “soft interview” that he owns “only four plots in Fako which, even if put together, will not make up to one hectare.” Lies, damned lies! Bad taste at its juiciest. Zang III breaks all decent rules and flouts decorum and common sense.

Our very discreet findings identify Zang III in particular, and others of his ilk, as owning tens, if not scores of hectares of land in Fako, some of which, by his own admission are duly registered in the statute books.

Some of the land that he grabbed was sold off, even before it was registered. It will be difficult for the administrator to deny having been involved in the sale of four hectares of land in Molyko for at least, FCFA 120 million. We are not, for now, compelled to mention the reasons.

He cannot deny that with the Mayor of Buea, he has been practically trading off land in Wonjoku village, Buea. The SDO couldn’t cover his tracks enough, when he, and his cohorts flaunted cash in a Buea hotel; some of which cash certain women of easy virtue spent in buying gorgeous dresses with and from which resulted the famous… “Ma own close fine pass your own…” utterance.

Zang III cannot take solace in the Head of State by quoting Mr. Biya out of context. He owns massive hectares in Mokindi Village in the West Coast of Limbe. He grabbed land in Ngeme Village, still in the West Coast, to name but these few.

Some of the cadastral plans for his fortune were documented as late as February this year. The process for legitimizing his newly grabbed land would have been conveniently put on hold following the recent dust raised by the hoofs of protesting horses on which Zang and his ilk have been riding rough shod.

It must be stressed, once again, that individual journalists have been bought with common coin, to shift their snoopy interests away from the grabbing bonanza. Just like many other unscrupulous individuals that set out or were detailed to unravel the grabbing spree, but who ended up with lips oiled by filthy lucre.

Zang III’s interview on Page 5, in this edition, raises unanswered questions; so many unanswered questions, for that matter. Rather than address fundamental issues of land-grabbing, the SDO has only ended up upsetting conventional values by his crass aristocratic pleasures and insolence.

It doesn’t even occur to him that he could challenge the claims of land-grabbing made against him in a court of law. This is probably because he is secretly aware that the facts are sacrosanct, watertight and incontrovertible. Zang III’s Selective Amnesia!

In his interview Zang III talks glibly of how… “Every week I have to solve land conflicts and disputes where some personalities and other persons have grabbed land…” Yet, for over a year today, since a petition was handed to him with subject matter as “Misrepresentation of Wonjamba Village on the CDC Land Surrender Scheme and a Threat of Fraudulent Usurpation of the Chieftaincy Title of Wonjamba in Buea Sub Division by Unscrupulous Elements” the SDO has been conspiratorially mute. Reminders haven’t pricked him to vouchsafe the petitioner’s acknowledgment of the said petition, let alone act on it.

While the SDO is stalling, the Chinese and other apparent impostors are having a field day, exploiting and marketing stones of all grades, including black sand and other aggregate from the said land that was duly surrendered by CDC, following a request from the Aborigines in 2000.

It may interest our readers that when the authorization for Wonjamba land surrender finally came about a year ago, those who applied for it, with documentary exhibits dating back to the German colonial era, strange persons turned up and have apparently been up to some fishy business here.

All protestations to Zang III, both in writing and by word of mouth have been ignored, more or less. The petitioners are simply requesting the SDO to challenge those fronting as the ones “calling the shots” in the surrendered Wonjamba land, to “prove their identities vis-à-vis ours, to save the Fako administration from being misled as the phenomenon to becoming chiefs through the land surrender scheme is constituting a nuisance and should be checked by the administration accordingly, before things go wrong.”

When we last checked, restive youths were spoiling to invade the place, chase off the quarry exploiting Chinese and other economic hangers-on from the surrendered Wonjamba and “re-possess our ancestral land.”

Memo To Fako SDO!

One of the chief proponents of the need to wrestle Fako land from the grip of grabbing predators, Barrister Mbella Ikomi Ngongi published a memo in The Post newspaper N0: 01513 of Monday, March 17, 2014 to wit: “Memo To Fako SDO”; Subject: Land Surrender by CDC to the indigenes of Fako: The Obligations and Challenges of Preserving Fako Ancestral Lands for Fako Indigenes and Posterity” The Memo had earlier been submitted to the SDO almost a year earlier on June 6, 2013. It was ignored.

Parts of it read:

“Today, the peoples of Fako are faced with the challenges of the overwhelming influx of economic migrants, who pose a considerable threat to their very survival as minorities in their own ancestral lands.

Coupled with this is the reckless and illegal sale by FAKO chiefs of indigenous lands surrendered by CDC. The obvious absence of any strategy by the people of Fako who are faced with this very serious and increasingly intractable problem, is evidenced by the way they are increasingly marginalized in the management of the affairs of the Division - politically, economically, socially, and, to a certain extent, even culturally…

“International Law, to which Cameroon law is subject, addresses the critical issue of protecting national and ethnic minorities all over the world… “The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, adopted by the General Assembly Resolution 47/135 of 18 December 1992, takes cognizance of this responsibility that States have towards their minority populations and exhorts Governments to take all appropriate measures, under the law, to guarantee their protection.

The situation in Fako today, where the reckless and illegal disposal of indigenous lands by some Fako chiefs, with the complicity of some government officials, occurs on a daily basis, calls for URGENT and DECISIVE actions, on the part of Government, the Judiciary and Civil Society – actions that would put an immediate stop to this continuing and insensitive abuse and criminality…

“The loss of Fako ancestral lands through this reckless and illegal sales and acquisition, or even theft, by some chiefs and Government officials, seriously threatens and undermines the identity and very existence of the people of Fako…

“When a people are deprived of their very fundamental source of livelihood, nay, existence, - their land - they cannot, under any circumstance, effectively participate in the economic, social, cultural, religious or public life in their country. The indigenous peoples of Fako face the real and present danger of suffering this fate if the current surrender of ancestral lands by the CDC continues in the haphazard, uncontrolled, maybe opaque, manner, style, and speed in which it has been done in the past and until today…

“The CDC has for several years now embarked, together with the assistance of the SDO and the Fako Division Department of Lands, on a program of surrendering Fako lands occupied by the CDC in the form of plantations, to many villages, which have applied to them for the surrender of parcels of land for their apparent use.

Many of the villagers in these villages to which lands have been surrendered by CDC do not own one square meter…”

To sum up, Zang III’s tantrums of denying his own “hard-grabbed” land is tantamount to the Biblical Peter denying Christ when it mattered most. The legal cock may have to crow thrice, for Zang III to verily accept that he, indeed, is one of the unsolicited keepers of Fako land. And that President Paul Biya appointed him not to act as an offending guardian of propriety, but to uplift the cultural disposition of power for the general good… peaceable belonging, if you will.