The Akawini land records for Presidential Advisor Odinga Lumumba which the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission said it was unable to track down are not likely to be found because Lumumba has disclosed that he never had a lease for the land.
Lumumba make the disclosure in an advertisement in the press on Sunday, May 23rd saying the Akawini land was covered by an MOU and that he never took the matter to the lease stage. “At a very early date I indicated that I was no longer interested in the property”, Lumumba stated.
Lumumba’s records relating to his Manarabisi land acquisition were published in the advertisement under the caption, ‘Amnesia vs Truth’ in an attempt to clear the air on whether the state lands he was awarded in the area were indeed granted by former Minister of Agriculture, Patrick McKenzie. The Lands and Surveys Commission had referred to the Manarabisi documents in a press statement, but the commission was not willing to release them. Commissioner Doorga Persaud had indicated that any public release of the documents would have to be facilitated by Lumumba.
Lumumba’s now public disclosure stands in contrast to statements he made earlier on the Akawini land acquisition. In a letter on April1 18, 2010 to Stabroek News Lumumba had said “I have relinquished to the state the rights to ten thousand (10,000) acres of land at Akawini in the Pomeroon area which I had acquired under the People’s National Congress (PNC) government”. He did not at that point clarify that it was a Memorandum of Understanding. His statement had conveyed the impression that he had had physical possession of the land and then returned it to the state.
His statement had prompted a letter from McKenzie saying that “I am not aware of land in the Akawini that was given to Mr Lumumba certainly not while I was Minister of Agriculture (October 1986 to December 1992.)”
In a follow up letter on May 14, 2010 challenging McKenzie’s recollection of the period, Lumumba said:
“First, of all I said that I was given access in writing to 10,000 acres of lands in 1991 or 1992 for the Pomeroon. I also stated that subsequently I withdrew from the process. During that period Mr. Ivor Allen and another Allen were also given lands in the same area…..
“Lands and Survey have records that would sh
ow that Mc Neal Enterprise followed the legal and administrative process from the region to central government and that Ex Minister Patrick Mc Kenzie gave written permission in his own hand writing, and sent recommendation from the region to the commission of Lands and Survey.” Lands and Surveys has not yet been able to trace any of this.
Questions about Lumumba’s acquisition of lands at Manarabisi and Akawini arose after he said that he had been offered a plot of land on Mandela Avenue in return for land that he had voluntarily given up at Manarabisi following a request by the PPP/C after it entered office in October, 1992. Lumumba’s May 23, 2010 advertisement also shed some further light on this matter. He had said that shortly after the PPP/C came to office in 1992 he had been requested by President Cheddi Jagan to relinquish to cattle farmers in the area 4,000 acres of the 10,000 acres he had been allotted earlier in the year.
Lumumba said that by that time he had already expended millions of dollars on the land but not withstanding this he willingly agreed to give up the 4,000 acres of land on the condition that he be given another plot of land.
However, the only document in the advertisement dealing with any change in the arrangements is one dated May 29th, 1997, two months after Dr Jagan passed away. It was in the form of a letter from Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon to Lumumba, saying that the Government of Guyana was now prepared to execute a lease for 7,500 acres of land in the Manarabisi Area/Lower Black Bush and that in the interim Lumumba would relinquish all rights to the previous lands and accept a provisional lease for the new amount with several conditions including the formal presentation of an appropriate and comprehensive management plan and the formal presentation of a financial plan.
Lumumba’s letter of April 18, 2010 said that he had agreed to give up to the Guyana Sugar Corporation and the Lands and Surveys Commission the remaining land at Manarabisi on the right bank of the Canje River without any form of compensation. At the bottom of the May 23rd, 2010 advertisement, it was stated that “2010 Government and Mc Neal Enterprise deliberated on the request for the remaining 7,300 acres by GuySuCo and the Ministry of Agriculture. McNeal Enterprise had not yet received any form of decision from the Government”. It is unclear what decision is to be made in relation to the remainder of land which is to be given up in the area. It is also unclear what operations were conducted on the land between 1997 to the present.