05/02/2025
SANYANG DEEP SEA PORT AND CONNECTED MATTERS
I act for the people of Sanyang comprising the Village Development Committee (SVDC), the Alkalo and Council of Elders, Sanyang Development Fund (SDF), the Sanyang Diaspora and Deep Sea Port Task Force and write this letter on their instructions.
My Clients welcome the location of a Deep Sea Port (DSP) in Sanyang as an opportunity with potential to uplift its economic status in major ways assuming the presence of a considerate governance structure.
The potentiality of an economic facelift for the community notwithstanding, my Clients are nevertheless apprehensive that it may be deeply affected communally and individually by the DSP. Even as the Gambia Ports Authority (GPA), and its oversight Ministry of Transport Works and Infrastructure are circularizing residents through flyers that their properties are affected, they are, without exception in darkness as to the location and true dimensions of the DSP overall.
In a climate such as is triggered by the DSP, fidelity to the process delineated by no less than the supreme law of the land is quite essential. My Clients accept the principle that the Government of the Gambia and its constituent departments and agencies can acquire landed property from private owners for public use but must follow a stipulated legal process mandated by the overriding law of the land.
More fundamentally, my Clients take the view that the GPA and the Government appears to have already identified and chosen a location without considering alternative sites and without consulting the community of Sanyang. To minimize the impact on Sanyang overall, my Clients propose thus:
all on-land facilities of the DSP be located on the sparsely settled Tourism Development Area after the old Hawba settlement to the boundary between Sanyang and Tujereng on the coastline.
ii. Sanyang’s cultural and historical sites, environmentally sensitive areas, and eco-tourism areas and facilities should not be impacted by the DSP project. Such sites include and are not limited to the old settlement of HAWBA, BEREWULENG PRAYER SHRINE, FISH LANDING SITE, THE MANGROVE REJUVENATION / PLANTING AREAS and the SACRED BEIKEFET RIVER.
iii. The area of Sanyang Beach from the old Howba settlement towards our boundary with Gunjur shall be available for exclusive access and use by the people of Sanyang, Gambians and tourists worldwide.
iv. All private land, settlements, properties and or compounds outside the designated TDA area of 800 meters from the water mark should strictly not be affected by the DSP as there is more than enough space in the sparsely settled TDA after the old Hawba settlement to the boundary between Sanyang and Tujereng on the coastline.
My Clients confirmed to me that the old settlement of HOWBA has been in existence for more than 400 years and is the original settlement of Sanyang.
The significance of old HOWBA is such that when the TDA was mapped by the Department of Physical Planning and Housing, HOWBA has always been excluded from that demarcation.
It is for no reason that “Protection from Deprivation of Property” is included among the fundamental freedoms and entrenched in the Constitution of The Gambia, 1997.
According to Section 22 of the Constitution:
(1) No property of any description shall be taken possession of compulsorily, and no right over or interest in any such property shall be acquired compulsorily in any part of The Gambia, except where the following conditions are satisfied:-
(a) the taking of possession or acquisition is necessary in the interest of defence, public safety, public order, public morality, public health, town and country planning or the development or utilization of any property in such manner as to promote the public benefit; and
(b) the necessity therefor is such as to afford reasonable justification of the causing of any hardship that may result to any person having any interest in or right over the property; and
(c) provision is made by law to that taking of possession or acquisition:-
(i) for the prompt payment of adequate compensation, and
(ii) securing to any person having an interest in or right over the property a right of access to a court or other impartial and independent authority for the determination of his or her interest or right, the legality of the taking of possession or acquisition of the property, interest or right, and the amount of any compensation to which he or she is entitled, and for the purpose of obtaining prompt payment of that compensation.
(2) ….
Nothing in this section shall be construed as affecting the making or operation of any law for the compulsory taking in the public interest of any interest in or right over property, where that property interest or right is held by a body corporate which is established directly by any law and in which no moneys are provided by an Act of the National Assembly
(3) Where a compulsory acquisition of land by or on behalf of the Government involves the displacement of any inhabitants who occupy the land under customary law, the Government shall resettle the displaced inhabitants ….
(4) Any such property of whatever description compulsorily taken possession of, and any interest in or right over property of any description compulsorily acquired in the public interest for a public purpose, shall be used only in the public interest or for the public purposes for which it is taken or acquired.
(5) Where any such property as is referred to in subsection (5) is not used in the public interest or for the public purpose for which it was taken or acquired, the person who was the owner immediately before the compulsory taking or acquisition, as the case may be, shall be given the first option of acquiring that property, in which event he or she shall be required to refund the whole or such part of the compensation as may be agreed upon between the parties thereto; and in the absence of any such agreement such amount as shall be determined by the High Court.
Of importance, the Government must pay adequate compensation.
I must stress that the compensation envisaged by the Constitution may be both monetary compensation and resettlement. More fundamentally, the acquisition must be in the public interest and for a public purpose, and “any such property of whatever description compulsorily taken possession of, and any interest in or right over property of any description compulsorily acquired in the public interest for a public purpose, shall be used only in the public interest or for the public purposes for which it is taken or acquired”.
On the face of things, the DSP project appears to meet the public purpose criteria.
Under section 2 of the Land Acquisition and Compensation Act (LACA), “public purposes” is defined as including:-
(a) for exclusive Government use or for community use;
(b) for or in connection with sanitary improvements of any kind, including reclamations;
(c) for or in connection with the laying out of any new Government station or the extension or improvement of any existing Government station;
(d) for obtaining control over land contiguous to any port or airport;
(e) for obtaining control over land required for defence purposes;
(f) for obtaining control over land subjected to environmental protection and conservation;
(g) for obtaining control over land the value of which will be enhanced by the construction of any railway, road or other public works or convenience about to be undertaken or provided by the Government; and
(h) for planning purposes.
It is only after land is acquired from its owners by the Government in accordance with the law that it may be designated a State land. According to section 3 of LACA, “any land acquired under the provisions of this Act shall be designated as State lands and shall be administered under the provisions of the State Lands Act”.
Although the DSP project appears to meet the public purpose criteria as highlighted above, my Clients seriously contended thus:
a. the size of the land being earmarked;
b. DSP location chosen by the GPA without consultation with the people of Sanyang.
In a widely shared West Coast Radio interview, Ousman Jobarteh, the Managing Director of GPA, stated clearly that the land acquisition for the Sanyang DSP is in two lots and both will cover from the water line of Sanyang beach, including all properties to the Sanyang/ Gunjur / Tujereng Coastal Road in the heart of the Village.
This open declaration by the GPA meant the DSP will wipe out and displaced more than half of the village of Sanyang. This caused huge distress and confusion to the entire populace. My Clients are of the informed view that the size of the land being earmarked is utterly disproportionate to the public use criteria.
The size of land earmarked for the DSP by the GPA is 100,000 hectares or thereabouts.
Adding to the distress of this media announcement by the GPA, circularizing residents through flyers that their properties are affected, while the community has never been shown any Master Plan of the area of the DSP is causing huge anxiety and unease about project transparency.
My Clients take the view the GPA has deliberately kept the community of Sanyang in darkness as there is no way a project of this magnitude will engage the services of a Consultancy company to indiscriminately mark and value properties without some sort of a Master Plan.
My Clients conducted extensive research into the size of similar deep sea ports in the sub region for like for like comparison. They discovered that the total land area for the Lekki Deep Sea Port in Nigeria is only 90 hectares, with a total population of more than 230 million. It is utterly baffling the GPA has earmarked such huge land space for comparatively tiny Gambia
To avoid the rigorous and extremely expensive legal regime delineated by section 22 of the Constitution, my Clients strongly reiterate and emphatically recommend that all on-land facilities of the DSP be located on the sparsely settled Tourism Development Area after the old Hawba settlement between Sanyang and Tujereng on the coastline.
With the above as background guidance, please contact the people of Sanyang SVDC for a fuller and more transparent discussion on the way forward regarding the DSP. My Clients primary demand is that a participatory process is more acceptable to it moving forward.
As agreed at the meeting with the Honourable Minister, and Managing Director of the GPA, my Clients have no wish to discuss the details of such a deeply involved process by telephone. They recommend a strictly formal process where all communication, including about meetings, are in writing and addressed to my person and office as legal representative in this matter.
With high regards
Lamin J. Darbo
Legal Practitioner for the People of Sanyang
