The court has spoken, and the record needs to be cleaned with consequences, not just words.
The High Court of Sierra Leone, through Justice Isata Sellu-Tucker, did two decisive things on June 10, 2026. First, it affirmed Madam Mariama Leigh as the rightful owner and co-owner of the 1.5713 acres at Nyndehum, Three Miles on the Waterloo-Masiaka Highway. Second, it cancelled the 2021 Deed of Conveyance from wrongly named Paramount Chief Alimamy Durah III as grantee, and ordered that entry be expunged.
In that same process, Chief Durah went on record under affidavit to say what should have been obvious from the start: he never granted power of attorney to Tunde Savage or Mohamed Abdul Leigh, he did not authorize anyone to act in his name, and he does not own the property. The court accepted that distance. That leaves a gaping hole in this case.
This was not a mistake. It was impersonation: 1. Filing court papers and purporting to act with the authority of a Paramount Chief is not a land dispute tactic. It is deception of the court. When two individuals allegedly use thehee, title, and perceived weight of a traditional leader to move a deed, they are borrowing the state’s own symbols to commit fraud. If that is left to slide, every chief’s name becomes a rubber stamp for grabbers. 2. Land along the Waterloo-Masiaka corridor is already a pressure point: That highway links Freetown to the north, and parcels there are fought over precisely because the value keeps rising. Madam Leigh had to fight through years of litigation to protect what the court now recognizes as hers. The 2021 deed was used as a weapon against her. Without accountability, the message to other families is simple: if you have a document, even a forged one, push hard enough, and you might keep the land. The minimum standard for deterrence: Clearing Chief Durah is not the end of the matter. It is the beginning of a criminal one. Perjury, forgery, and contempt do not get resolved by a civil judgment alone. If Tunde Savage and Mohamed Leigh presented themselves to the court or to the Administrator and Registrar General as agents of the Chief when the Chief denies it, the state has a duty to investigate and prosecute. Otherwise, we are telling people that you can lie to a High Court, lose the case, and walk away. 4. The ruling protects two institutions at once: It protects individual property rights, and it protects the office of Paramount Chief from being dragged into private schemes. Chief Durah’s testimony removes his chiefdom from the dispute. That matters in Bombali, and in Koya, because once traditional authority is falsely implicated, community trust erodes fast.
Lawyer Jessie M. Jengo called it: “Justice has been served to my client and to the justice system in the country.” For that justice to be complete, the next step cannot be administrative. The Attorney General’s office and the police should treat the alleged false power of attorney and the filing in the Chief’s name as a criminal matter.
A perpetual injunction now protects Madam Leigh’s land. What will protect the next Madam Leigh is seeing people held to account for trying to hijack the court in the first place.