The years 2010 and 2011 were ever unique for Gambella, because it was the first historicalrnand memorable time when Gambella has received tremendous reactions from national andrninternational medias, activists and scholars, fromgovernment and non-government actors. Thisrnwas, due to the parallel episode of two globally and nationally sensitive issues of giving outrnvirgin and fertile land for local and foreign investors and planning of resettling geographicallyrnscattered 45,000 people together through villagization program.rnTherefore, this study was conducted with the general objective of addressing the conflictingrnperspectives over the programs pertaining to villagization and land grabbing. To this end,rninterview, personal observation, focus group discussion have been used intensively with allrnconcerned government officials, investors and local people. And the study revealed that therngovernment provoked only the independence and non-correlational nature of villagization andrnland leasing programs, while the fact is thatthereis implicitlyplanned long term means-endsrncorrelation in between the programs in the future. But, for now both are going on in the regionrnconcomitantly.rnMoreover, the Michael Carnea's resettlement based model and, Borras and Franco's landrnownership and land usage change model were used by the study. Accordingly, the programsrnresulted in multi-faceted problems and the shift of usage of land from forest and governmentallyrncalled idle and marginal land to food and non-food productions and, shift of ownership of landrnfrom the ownership of indigenous people to the ownership of land by the "elites" of politics andrneconomy is visible in the region. Therefore, it is the call of this paper for policy formulatorsâ€™rntoredesign and re consider the programs in a way it can make indigenous people the beneficiaryrnof the land leasing and other land related projects going on in the region.rnKeywords: villagization, resettlement, land grabbing, development