By Alieu Ceesay
A United States-based Gambian has accused the former Gambian International Footballer Tijan Jaiteh of conspiring with the Gambia government through the Ministry of Lands to forcefully take a portion of his land in Kitty for the constitution of his privately owned football academy he planned to build.
Lamin Konteh, based in Seattle, Washington, is currently experiencing nightmares as the Gambia government allegedly sized his private land and surrounded it with one Tijan Jaiteh to build a football field.
The said land is located in Kitty with a dimension of 150 by 275 (125×275)
According to the victim, Lamin, he bought this land in 2017 and is in possession of all necessary land documents.
As he kicked off construction at the said land, the Gambia police personnel threatened his contractors.
Konteh stated that ” I started fencing the land, and the police came there and told me to stop the work. I told them this was my land. They said they received instructions from the top that they should stop anyone doing construction work on my land and threatened to arrest me for trespassing.”
Konteh further stated that the police told him the government had allocated the said land to a private individual with land documents stating the new land ownership.
” I told the police that I have my documents from the physical planning and from the alkalo and that the said land is mine, but they still stopped me from working on my land while the other party was still working there, which is unfair.”
Dramatically, both Konteh and Tijan are issued land documents as the rightful owners of the same piece of land.
Top government officials, including the deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Lands, visited the said and called on Mr. Konteh’s representative to meet him at his office in Banjul to discuss the issue.
In response to the situation, the Deputy Permanent Secretary for Lands, Mamudou Manjang, recommends that both parties halt any development activities on the land in question until further notice, as long as the conflict persists.
Mr. Konteh has threatened to take a legal battle against the Gambian government, emphasizing that ” I spent a lot of money on this land and am not going to forgive up about it; I will take the government to court.”
Land disputes in the Gambia have sparked a lot of commotion over the years. Disappointingly, top government officials have been involved in several land crises, giving the government little or no chance to settle land disputes in the country.
