People and residents of Masantigie village in Waterloo -Western Area Rural District, have accused the United Methodist Church( UMC) in Sierra Leone of using the police and the military to unleash violence, intimidation and lethal force to grab their community land.
The land at Pa Loko- Masantegie- is close to a thousand acre- which now holds hundreds of houses from built and owned by Sierra Leone nationals from across all walks of life.
The land is said to be legally owned by the Masangie community. The community argued their ancestors had only accommodated one Mango Brown who had engaged in fishing and subsistence farming and then later Mango Brown drew in one Pa Taylor.
“We still cannot understand how the UMC came to own a land here. The UMC mission doesn’t own a land here. There’s no one to show a land was sold to the UMC here. We didn’t sell them the land. If they claimed we did, let them come forth with authentic documentation identifying those who sold it to them. How can you own a land you are only now surveying?” Village Head of Masantegie, Mohamed O. Kanu told This Day Salone.
The village head said the UMC mission was just grabbing their land, going far beyond what was given them for agricultural purpose.
“We decided to reclaim our land because the UMC didn’t live up to expectation. The UMC like many others is a foreign mission. Even when they were farming here, they didn’t meet their Corporate Social Responsibilities to our community. No road construction nor road maintenance. No infrastructural development. No support whatsoever for the people of Masantegie. How do you want to build a university when you don’t have a primary school in the community? Even the church they claim to have is standing there with cracks running through it. They had failed us in every respect,” he added.
One Reverend Solomon George Rogers of the UMC mission in Sierra Leone has been largely accused by the community of using police intimidation and brutality to grab the said land.
The fight between the UMC mission in Sierra Leone and the people of the Masantegie community for the land at Pa Loko has been on for decades.
The use of the Sierra Leone Police by the UMC against the people of Masantegie had resulted to the deaths of youths who had stood up to fight their right. Stakeholders and the elderly of the village had been victimized and jailed severally.
The UMC has equally accused the villagers of grabbing their land. They said they want to build a university in the said land. They asserted they are going to demolish the over thousand houses that had been built by Sierra Leoneans at Pa Loko.
When President Julius Maada Bio took power in 2018, his Lands Minister then, Dr. Dennis Sandy had brokered a peace deal between the community and the UMC mission for the said land. An MoU was signed that if the UMC didn’t build their proposed university in the space of two years, the community would take back their land. It’s almost five years since the deal was struck. And the UMC is still surveying the land.
Meanwhile, Sierra Leone’s Customary Land Rights Act and the Land Commission Act, both enacted in August 2022, empower local landowners to negotiate the value of their land with investors and prevent it being leased out or grabbed without their express consent.
