Lincoln Lewis in land dispute with Kingelly residents

Aug 12, 2020 News

Lincoln Lewis

Over 30 residents travelled from Kingelly, WCB to Georgetown to highlight their concerns.

Veteran trade unionist, Lincoln Lewis, is locked in a bitter land dispute with residents of Kingelly Village, West Coast Berbice (WCB), Region Five.

Over 30 residents travelled to Georgetown from the WCB village yesterday to meet with the authorities and have the issue highlighted by the media.

The residents are accusing Lewis of a barefaced attempt to seize hundreds of acres of land at Kingelly already in their possession.

Kaieteur News understands that the issue stems from a dispute over ancestral properties dating back to the 1960s.
Since then, the issue has resulted in various forms of litigation as well as a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into claims made by Lewis that the properties are part of his ancestral inheritance.
The villagers complained that this is despite their occupation of properties for in excess of three decades.
“We live there and farm the lands for years. Most people grew up in Kingelly and inherit the property from their parents or grandparents,” said Sharmella Abel a resident of Kingelly for over 30 years.

The woman said that their troubles started after Lewis claims of ancestral inheritance to Kingelly surfaced a few years ago. Abel divulged that as a result, several members of the farming community took steps to secure prescriptive title for the land.
She said that she thought the matter had been put to rest, up until last weekend when Lewis and two other persons, including a member of the Kingelly Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC), joined in fencing large sections of the land, again claiming ancestral rights to the properties.
“He just come over the weekend, and start fence the lands that we using as pasture. When we tell he can’t do that, he say he got transport for the land. He say that his great grandfather de own de land but he ain’t produce no transport. Those lands were passed down. I grow up there and we never had issues with the land except when Lincoln Lewis come and claim that the land belongs to him. He is taking advantage of these people and have respect for nobody, especially poor people,” Abel asserted.
She told Kaieteur News that Lewis’ illegal occupancy of the lands has severely affected their livelihood.
The woman accused Lewis of putting up a fence to stop the villagers from grazing their animals and living peacefully…”
Jackelyn Hart another resident, who spoke on behalf of residents of Kingelly, told this newspaper that Lewis has been taking possession of the properties to sell to friends and family.
She too explained that Lewis’ claims that his great grandfather, Kojo McPherson, brought all the lands and even testify before a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into African ancestral land matters.
“His claim of a transport is questionable since the State only produced documentation for the lands from the 1970s but he come and breaking down people fence and taking over the pasture and building he own fence blocking people’s entrance and all sorts of things. It is just barefaced bullyism,” the woman said.
She said that she hopes by raising the matter with the authorities, it would result in some redress for the residents of Kingelly.
Kaieteur News made efforts to contact Lewis for a comment on the matter but all calls to his mobile phone went unanswered.
However, during an appearance before a CoI into African ancestral land matters in 2017, Lewis made claims that his grandfather had owned the properties. Lewis reportedly produced a transport for the land but told there was no will to prove his inheritance.
He had explained “…That my great, great, great grandfather Kojo did not leave a will for his descendants is a matter of perspective in the era that he lived; that the absence of such document may have caused others not of his lineage to think that it is acceptable to claim land that they did not purchase nor could not have inherited, our submission to this commission is to have this injustice corrected.”