Land grabbers: Landlords send SOS to Ambode

Landlords and indigenes of Olokonla town via Ogombo in Eti Osa Local Government Area of Lagos State have appealed to Governor Akinwunmi  Ambode to save them from lands grabbers who, they said, want to take over their land by force.

The affected people, who are elders of  families of Bakare  Orebiyi, Seidu Ogunleye, Idowu Bakare and Amoja Oseni made the appeal while briefing newsmen about the destruction of their property by those they alleged were bent on forcefully dislodging them from their ancestral homes.

The families, in a statement signed on their behalf by their secretary, Olayinka Odedina, expressed “displeasure over the willful, unlawful, malicious and unprecedented mass destruction” of their buildings and property worth N15 billion, alleging that one businessman in connivance with some officials of the Lagos State government was behind the plot to forcefully evict them from their ancestral homes with the aid of uniformed men.

They recalled that on December 8, a list of some contraventions dated December, 2016 were pasted on some of the buildings in the community, by some people who claimed to be officials of the state Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development.

The families stated that following this development, they informed  their lawyer, Rasaq Abudu, who  wrote letters to the state Commissioner for Physical Planning and Urban Development, Commissioner for Justice and Attorney General,  the General Manager of New Town Development Agency (NTDA) and other ministries and other relevant agencies.

According to the statement, the concerned ministries and agencies were also intimated that taking any action on their lands would be sub judicial because a suit on the matter is pending before Justice Olokooba at the Lagos High Court sitting in Epe with suit no LD/091LMW/2015 and that the judge had ruled that status quo ante be maintained until  the determination of the case before it.

“More importantly, the defendants have through the Office of the Attorney- General and Commissioner for Justice responded to all the processes in the suit, wherein the honourable court had on 15th October 2015 ordered parties to the suit to maintain status quo ante and trial had been scheduled to commence on February 1st, 2017,” the statement said.

The families, therefore, appealed to the state government to clear its name from the mess because the perpetrators claimed they were sent by the state government.

They said government should act fast to save the situation as they affirmed that the level of destruction was too much to bear, just as they said that some of them had been hospitalised as a result of the shock occassioned by their losses.