KAKATA, Margibi – The land commissioner for Margibi, Joe Dorah, is drawing attention to what he says is a growing wave of land conflicts in the county.

According to Dorah, Marshall is a particular location that has become a hotspot for land conflicts in the county, owing to the proliferation of illegal sale of land in the area. He warned that the growing number of land conflicts was leading to physical conflicts.

He noted that a lot of the surveyors who are unlicensed were the ones fueling the conflicts, as they are carrying out surveys without notices to the adjacent parties.

“The first thing we want to do is to minimize the illegal survey of land, and by that, we can minimize the land conflicts,” Dorah said.

He added that his office is working in collaboration with city mayors and township and district commissioners across the county to follow up on any land sales to reduce potential conflicts.

The Margibi land commissioner is calling on land buyers to do due diligence before purchasing any land, to avoid legal troubles in the future.

“It is good to do due diligence instead of you buying the land cheap and you keep running from police station to police station and from one court to another,” he warned potential buyers.

Four individuals were recently arrested and jailed for illegally selling land in Marshall. The men – Emmanuel Smith, Levy Keabah, William Smith, and George Tokpa – are currently being held as pre-trial detainees.

Their arrest prompted protestors, organized as the Marshall Citizens Organization, to petition Judge Mardea-Tarr Chenoweth to not release the four Marshall residents.

Photo courtesy: Emmanuel Degleh

The petitioners further called on the government to immediately intervene to curb the proliferation of illegal land sales by people they called “land terrorists.”

The protestors warned that illegal land sellers could jeopardize the peace of a post-conflict Liberia.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article misspelled Joe Dorah’s name. Featured photo by Emmanuel Degleh