Liberia: 90-Year-Old Woman Cries Foul after Losing Land Case at Supreme Court

Report by Kennedy L. Yangian, [email protected]

Monrovia – A 90-year-old woman is planning to resist any attempt by the Supreme Court to evict her from a parcel of land located in the Saye Town Community in Sinkor – a suburb of Monrovia.

Annie Constance claims she was not accorded justice by the high court.

“I will not leave from on this land except they bring bulldozer to remove me from my own property that I and my late husband bought in 1965,” said Constance after losing the case over the disputed land.

The mother of five lost the case at the Supreme Court in March 2017 when Associate Justice Kabineh Ja’neh came down with a verdict.

Explaining her ordeal to a group of reporters at her home, she recalled that her land was illegal sold in1996 during another round of Liberia’s civil conflict when she fled the country and went into exile in Guinea.

While in Guinea, one of her sons, Nyema Constance Jr. without any authority and upon his own initiative sold her 0.054 lot of land to Associate Justice Kabineh Ja’neh.

Nyema died in 1997 a year after the land was sold, she said.

Madam Constance said since she had five children it was therefore illegal for one of them to sell the entire family property.

The land in question, according to court document – copy of which is in the possession of FrontPage Africa – under the signature of then Judge of the Monthly Probate Court at the Temple of Justice was put on sale in 1996 after the probate court had granted Nyema Constance Jr decree of sale when he petitioned the court.

Part of Nyema’s petition to the Probate Court reads: “The petition of J. Nyema Constance Jr (son of the deceased/ administrator/petitioner) praying this honorable court for court’s decree of sale to dispose of zero-point fifty-four lot of land of the intestate estate of his late father J. Nyema Constance, Sr. located and lying in Russell Avenue, Sinkor, Montserrado County.

Madam Constance was sued at the Civil Law Court of the Temple of Justice to be ejected from the land but her lawyer at the time, Cllr. Lawrence Yeakula, requested for time to amicably resolve the matter.

While seeking an amicable solution, she said, the Civil Law Court Judge at the time Boima Kontoe ruled and adjudged her liable by default for not appearing for the hearing.

She also claimed that her lawyer accepted the lower court ruling, which found her liable and announced an appeal to the Supreme Court.

But the high court dismissed the appeal because her lawyer did not affect the appeal process.

“The court having reviewed the averments in the motion to dismiss and finding that same is in irrefutably in consonance with the  applicable laws  it is hereby that the motion to dismiss the appeal be same is hereby granted and the appeal is dismissed,” the Supreme Court ruled.

However, the 90-year-old claims despite the Supreme Court’s decision to dismiss her appeal her son was not the rightful person to sell family property and therefore, she would not illegally lose her property.