Bizarre land bazaar

It is possible, very possible that land grabbing is practised nationwide. Our investigations point to the ugly fact that most communal clashes that have given Government much trouble is bent land deals and attendant greed.

Millions, if not billions of francs of tax payers’ money have been channelled into one project or the other, including trying to wash some dirty national linen in a far off African Court in Banjul, The Gambia. This was when the Bakweri Lands Claim Committee “went to foreign equity” to pressurise Government to hand back indigenous lands that were grabbed from the Bakweris during the days of the colonialists.

Following the ensuing litigation, Government, in its determination to let social peace and justice reign amongst its people, ordered the gradual, albeit, systematic ceding of some CDC land to indigenous Bakweri communities. But this apparent compromise and capitulation was hijacked by enemies of the regime and by extension, of peace and harmony.

Yes, in Fako Division of the Southwest Region, land-grabbing is just more than a syndrome, with speculators and other Shylocks almost grabbing, selling and buying off every little strip, as though the land here, was going out of fashion.

As soon as certain patriots and media uncovered the ugly trend recently, primary/pecuniary beneficiaries of the scam went to work, desperately attempting to frustrate the truth and passing off patriotic Cameroonians as xenophobic and, in certain extremely clumsy cases, belonging to the SDF opposition party; as if there are no Bakwerians in that party whose land has been stolen.

Some hitherto outspoken reporters, Iscariots and gutter press were bribed with rare sweeteners. They were stuffed with slush funds and made to keep the lid on the land-grabbing sleaze. Resort to cheap blackmail and bellicosity also took centre stage, with ‘five- star’ looters petitioning Yaounde to look elsewhere while the looting goes on.

Be that as it may, The Post procured cast iron, albeit, verifiable evidence to the effect that land-grabbing, especially in Fako Division, has been going on, unabated, and that if care was not taken, the Aborigines of this part of the country may sooner end up landless, or better still, kicked out of their own ancestral tent like the proverbial camel did its master, the Arab. Our findings did not only identify flaming tinder on a keg of gunpowder.

We also found as a fact that lands, especially that surrendered to the natives by the Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC, on the instructions of the Government, have been practically sold off in a bazaar of sorts by gullible, nay, greedy traditional rulers and in certain cases, looted outright or commandeered by intimidating, overbearing and domineering civil administrators.

Yet, other “emergency beneficiaries” of indigenous land willy-nilly bought it, believing the transactions to be clean and legal. These ones, who in some cases naively obtained land from fictitious villages or other sources, are few, in any case.

Grabbing By Administrative Fiat! One recurring name of an administrator that has practically taken more land for the owners not to notice is the Senior Divisional Officer, SDO, for Fako, Zang III. From our findings, with an unusually large appetite for land, this man has amassed many hectares of Fako land, tens of which have been duly authenticated by land certificates, conveniently issued by the active land-grabbing Mafioso.

In the racketeering, spearheaded by the likes of Zang III, the poor communities were, and are left out in the cold, landless, with neither savvy, zeal nor courage to raise a voice of dissent.

Sitting Mayor of the Buea Council is one such person with crooked fingers in the doubtful “land pie.” Patrick Esunge Ekema is reportedly being investigated by the relevant state machinery on allegations of illegal land transactions. He is said to have sold off both existing and non-existing lands to people who are now agitating and has been involved, with others, in special pilgrimages to Yaounde in a desperate bid to stem the high tide of justice.

Two Sides Of A Bad Coin In The Market! Greedy traditional rulers and unscrupulous civil servants in vantage positions are known to have been “raping” Fako lands; agreed. But two actors that have taken centre stage in the deals are Zang III and Florence Eya Batey, Lands Registrar at the Regional Delegation of State Property, Surveys and Land Tenure.

Whereas Zang III is known to have been grabbing and registering land with a rather devil-may-care abandon, Mrs. Batey has been pussy-footing in her own deals, ensuring that most of her loot is conveniently covered up, by being registered in her mother’s name. Documents will, of course, trace her surreptitious land deals to her mum, Mrs. Agnes Orock Besong. We shall return to the fine details of these transactions in a subsequent publication.

For the moment, however, information at our disposal indicates, inter alia, that not too long ago, a Ministerial Decision was signed, allocating 27 hectares of land to Bwiteva village in Buea.

But that in complicity with the Southwest Regional Delegate of Lands, Surveys and State Property, the Registrar of Lands, Emmanuel Dibo Mosami and Florence Eya Batey, issued a Land Certificate for 32 hectares instead. That is to say, an excess of five hectares were fraudulently introduced or slipped into the Land Certificate. The said five hectares were subsequently kept by Mosami, Batey and Zang III, the Fako SDO.

In Bwitingi village, instead of establishing a certificate for 17 hectares of land surrendered, the trio fixed one for 20 hectares, the excess of which also benefited the thieving or better still, grabbing unholy trinity of Mosami, Batey and Zang.

In the case of Molyko, instead of 35 hectares of land concluded for surrender to this University neighbourhood, Batey once more issued a Land Certificate to cover 70 hectares.

Fako SDO, Zang III once more picked up a hectare; Mosami and Batey took five and, again, four hectares were sold out to Mrs. Kate Fotso, nee Kai, of TELCAR Company, Douala, for a whooping FCFA 120,000,000 (one hundred and twenty million francs).

Bomaka village in Buea had a doubtful Ministerial Order used in establishing a Land Certificate. And once again, the trio of Zang, Batey and Mosami commandeered three of the hectares and shared among themselves.

A similar thieving pattern was replicated in Upper Muea, Soppo Likoko, Wokaka, Bokoko, Bokwai, Mwangai and Wonjia villages, with all the deals running into scores of hectares that were similarly and systematically stolen, gazetted or are in the process of being authenticated.

Fako SDO, Zang III, would have also laid his claws on some 21 plots of land in Limbe II Subdivision and for which Batey had fixed a good number of land certificates and was still fixing more, when the whistle was blown and she scampered to legal safety, so to speak.

It is on record that SDO Zang III appropriated some five hectares of community land in Njonji village in the West Coast of Limbe with a choice one hectare of the said land on the shores of the beatific Atlantic Ocean. His application for a certificate to this effect is pending in the appropriate quarters.