Hon. Hawa Roseline Saffa of the ruling Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) representing Kailahun in Parliament has refused to comment on allegations made against her with regards to a land grabbing scam at Bathurst Village in Freetown.
While Concord Times placed a call to cross check the allegations, she posed as her secretary and promised to get on to us later, but has refused to respond to several calls made to her phone number 076635717.But Concord Times later discovered that the said number belongs to the Member of Parliament who stands accused of land grabbing.
Concord Times is in possession of several official correspondences that tend to implicate her for land grabbing and abuse of power.
Apparently, the documents appear to suggest that the Hon Member of Parliament has been effectively abusing her position as a member of the Parliamentary Oversight Committee on Lands to illegally possess land belonging to other people in Freetown especially around the Barthurst and Gloucester Communities.
It was alleged that in 2007, Hon. Hawa Roseline Saffa was said to have manufactured a “Deed of Gift” and that in a desperate bid to possess the over 97 acre land, she backdated the same document to 1998.
After a series of twists and turns, the Lands Ministry intervened and came out with a report dated 26th June 2015 that a survey plan with LS No 1533/84 presented by the Member of Parliament was fake.
Our findings also show that the Hon Member of Parliament from Kailahun had alleged enlisted the services of a certain Ekundice Thomas in an effort to arm-twist the Lands Ministry to do further surveys on the same piece of land. These additional survey reports have only ended up confirming ownership of the land to the Bathurst people.
As it happened in 2007, the original land owning families of Bathurst and Gloucester had secured the services of a young lawyer, Umaru Napoleon Koroma (who is now the Deputy Minister of Mines and Mineral Resources),to help them secure legal documentation for the ownership to a land inherited from their forefathers.
The families who could not afford to pay for Napoleon’s services offered him a piece of the land which he had started to develop until Hon Hawa Siafa allegedly hired thugs to demolish a temporal structure and carted away over five thousand blocks from the one acre land that was now transferred to the young lawyer and fully surveyed and registered by the Ministry of Lands.
This medium also spoke to local authorities in the area, including the Headman, Councillor, Youth Leader and other prominent stakeholders who have vehemently debunked claims that Hon Saffa or her accomplices have any rightful ownership to the disputed land.
Concord Times will continue to investigate the issue as it unfolds.
