NMA Sets Fire in Sella Limba – No Justice for Landowners?

The National Minerals Agency (NMA) is charged with the constitutional responsibility of regulating mining activities in Sierra Leone to ensure that peace and tranquility prevails in the country’s mining sector.

But the current fierce Coltan conflict raging in the Sella Limba Chiefdom, Kambia District, tempts Parrot to believe that NMA woefully failed in its constitutional task to properly regulate the Coltan mining in the Sella Limba Chiefdom, otherwise, the conflict would never have erupted between the Mining, Agriculture and Construction Company (MIACCO) landowners and the AMR Gold Exploration Company, and the fact that the NMA has not been able to resolve the conflict permanently is a discredit on its part.

Parrot doubts the sincerity of the NMA in the whole dispute and the critical bird is with the strong view that the Coltan fire blazing in Sella Limba has been set by the NMA either by doing of failing to do certain things. How has the NMA set the Coltan fire?

The NMA has set the Coltan fire in Sella Limba by selling one Coltan mining plot to two companies, MIACCO and AMR Gold. MIACCO paid the sum of about seven million Leones to NMA officials for their Coltan mining plot which the NMA is now allowing the AMR Gold to mine through its Wilkingson Hills. MIACCO also paid the sum of over fifty million Leones to NMA officials to demarcate the said plot. Even the Public Relations Office of the NMA has admitted to Parrot that the said officials received the payments from MIACCO though not with the mandate of NMA. If that is the case, then the NMA has very corrupt officials whose corrupt act of receiving the payment without the mandate of NMA has fueled the Coltan mining land dispute during which many landowners have been brutalized and deprived and over 350 youths rendered jobless.

The heated palaver prompted the Vice-President, Victor Bockarie Foh, to set up an investigative and mediatory committee which has submitted their findings and recommendations to His Excellency the President, Ernest Bai Koroma for endorsement. Among the committee’s recommendations was that MIACCO landowners must regain their mining plot.

While the committee report awaits President Koroma’s endorsement, the landowners continue to suffer marginalization and frustration climaxed by the prevention of their group of investors from visiting the chiefdom to assess their company’s business viability and the potential riches of their land even though the investors paid a courtesy call on Vice-President Foh who gave them his blessing.

The discontented landowners are suspecting the APC Secretary-General, Foday Yansaneh, the Inspector-General of Police, Francis Munu, and the Local Unit Commander of Kamakwe police of being behind the problem. They have also categorically stated that they are shocked at what they describe as flagrant injustice meted out to them by the NMA and other concerned authorities.

Therefore, the dissentient landowners have, as their last resort, written a sorrowful letter to President Koroma pleading with him to urgently endorse the committee’s report and use his good office to ensure that justice prevails so that the long standing violent dispute will be laid to final rest.

Considering the inescapable fact that the violent Coltan conflict in Sella Limba bears the potential to undermine national security, Parrot is also on bended knees begging President Koroma to deliver prompt justice in the matter. It is always very dangerous to mine people’s land without their consent.

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