By Nubeh Nai Vonna

Civil societies in the public sector have sought to improve community access to justice on land related matters, by initiating a broad-based stakeholder collaboration aimed at amplifying their voices for quality service delivery and peace.

This was eased by an advocacy workshop that held Wednesday October 27 2021 at Hilltop hotel Up Station Bamenda.

The workshop was aimed at communicating civil society policy brief on the land sector, given the numerous drawbacks recorded in the sector.

“A lot of things have been going wrong in the land sector like issues of lack of transparency, corruption and poor accountability and today we addressed some of these issues in a policy proposal which the legislators can work on for onward transmission into parliament” Tombir Stanley, coordinator NWADO

Tombir Stanley, coordinator NWADO

Looking at the 1974 land ordinance, these stakeholders in the public sector are of the opinion that it contradicts today’s reality.

“Young people seem to be sightlined from the accusation of land titles and there is a narrative of them going into entrepreneurship. We all know that land is a critical factor of production. So if conditions guaranteeing the right to have a land certificate are not favorable for young people, how then do they become entrepreneurial?” Tombir Stanley once more.

Christopher Mbafor is a consultant at PROSIVIC and facilitated the model on civil society policy brief.

Christopher Mbafor, consultant, PROSIVIC

“Land problems are of two categories; problems more or less superficial or peripheral which are related to administrative procedures. But the fundamental problem or roote causes stems from policies relegated to us by our colonial Masters who on wanting to colonize us, wanted to unpossess us of our customary and ancestral lands”

He adds that”unless we revisit some of these laws particularly the 1974 law, we will not solve the problem at the administrative level”

The session assembled about 30 stakeholders, who all professed the need for a legislative process, to aggregate broken laws and subsequent ordinances and also create mechanisms where local communities, traditional and customary laws, will have an open hand on issues of land administration and ownership.