The governor of the South West has denied the existence of a land grabbing problem in Buea and spoken in support of chiefs who have been accused of enriching themselves through the massive sale of communal land.

Governor Bernard Okalia Bilai, a party in the Buea land scandal who is believed to have sought deeds for large expanses of property, said the national law and local customs gave traditional chiefs custody over land.

He said no one had complained about chiefs seizing their land, even though media reports have been replete with complaints from locals and other traditions rulers. The crisis has led to a split in the Fako chief’s conference.

He spoke in Yaounde after attending a meeting of the country’s ten governors that discussed security issues.

“Concerning the land issue, if there is a land issue, the problem is that according to the laws of the republic, according to the customs of the people, traditional rulers, chiefs of villages, are the custodians of land,” Bilai told Cameroon Calling, the Sunday morning radio show on the state-run CRTV.

“Land was surrendered to the communities through their chiefs. The chiefs are managing the land under the supervision of the administration. If some people have problems with their chiefs we advise them to go back to traditional councils and settle the matter.

“There is no need disgracing the chiefs because when you are disgracing the chiefs in public tomorrow you will not be proud of your chief.”

He added in the interview that “at our level, people have not complained that their land has been seized, that is why we consider those problems, those noises, as internal problems among sons and daughters of the areas concerned, which is mainly Buea.”

In spite of the governor’s denial of a problem, he said land authorities have suspended the sale of properties in the area while local administrative authorities in Buea and Tiko are investigating.

Large expanses of land were given to the people in the Fako division following year of occupation by the Cameroon Development Corporation, the state-run agro-industrial complex. Long disappeared villages reappeared and their chiefs made a fortune selling parcels of land in what was marketed as village expansion and urbanization programmes. Most of the land went to non-natives.

Earlier this year, it emerged that local administrators also acquired large properties almost for free and sought to obtain title deeds, possibly violating a rule to avoid conflict of interest that bars administrators from acquiring land in their area of service.

A programme on Radio Buea went off the air shortly after a panel of journalists discussed the issue.