Demolition of buildings
A
protracted land tussle has resulted in the demolition of many houses
and displacement of hundreds of residents of Ilaje, Badagry LGA in
Lagos, writes BOSEDE OLUSOLA-OBASA
The residents of Ilaje community in the
Ojo area of Lagos will not forget the events of December 31, 2012 in a
hurry. On that day, the relative peace and calm of the community was
suddenly punctured by the rumble of a bulldozer and the presence of
armed policemen assigned with the unpleasant task of rewriting the
destinies of the residents.
The bulldozer proceeded to pull down
about 30 residential houses and other structures on Okeola Street,
Church Street and Okeola Close.
The demolition squad was allegedly
instructed to enforce a court judgment obtained by one of the land
owners in the area, following unresolved issues surrounding lease
agreements and payment of entitlements to families, who allegedly own
land in the area.
Although many of the tenants claimed
they were left in the dark, some of them recalled that the affected
houses had been marked for demolition in July 2012.
The rest is now history. Many of the
displaced families, who were tenants, are now left to mourn their dead,
bear their losses and pains.
The Orogbemi Family, whose residence was
on Church Street may never recover from the incident and the shocking
loss of their 10-year old daughter, Ireti.
Little Ireti Orogbemi, who was an only
daughter, died a few days after she suffered shock as a result of the
action of the policemen.
The parents of the deceased said that
although she had taken ill before the demolition squad swooped on the
community, her condition worsened when the law enforcement agents
suddenly invaded their home and threw the family out before destroying
their house.
A dismal atmosphere prevailed in the
community when our correspondent visited last week. The main access road
was blocked by rubble from the demolished houses and virtually rendered
impassable.
Some residents were seen rummaging the debris left behind by the demolition squad in search of valuable items.
Household items, such as settees, tables,
wrappers from broken wardrobes, shoes and stoves, among other things,
littered the area.
Eyewitnesses said the policemen
frustrated attempts by some residents to recover some of the properties
before their houses came crashing down.
Another tenant, Odey Abua, almost
tearfully narrated his ordeal in the hands of the policemen. Still in
shock, he gazed endlessly at the spot where his residence used to be and
said, “My plan on the eve of the New Year was to attend the crossover
service in my church in the evening. My first child had gone to spend
the holidays with my relatives. I was at home with my second child and
my wife.
“It was not yet noon when we heard that a
demolition squad had arrived in the community with a bulldozer. Now I
sleep in the open to make sure that my belongings are not stolen by
thieves. I have not been able to resume work because I am completely
shattered and demoralised. When I left my twin sister in Ajegunle to
settle here in 2003, I never imagined this would happen to me. Whatever
the differences between the land owners, it should not have come to
this.”
Abua said six months earlier, when the
tenants of the affected houses observed that the buildings had been
marked for demolition, they sought an explanation from the landlords,
most of whom live far away from the community, but they were given the
assurance that everything was under control. But the moment the
bulldozer pulled down the big house at the beginning of the street, they
knew that they we were already in trouble.
Sixty-five year-old Edward Ikechukwu, who
works with the Alaba International Market branch of a bank, sat by the
rubble of his erstwhile rented apartment. He told our correspondent that
he was confused about the whole matter.
He said, “I believe that my God will make a way. I don’t know what to say.”
Another victim, Anjorin Bamidele, a PHCN
employee in the Ojo Business District, had inherited one of the
demolished houses from his mother. The house was built about 52 years
ago on a plot of land leased to his parents by some families from Awori.
“It is unfortunate that such a thing can
still happen in a well-integrated community like this. Whatever the
issue, it should have been resolved amicably. We can only cry out to the
government to help us.
“The entire residents in this environment
have been rendered homeless. We suddenly saw that our houses were
marked sometime in July and some of the residents including my elder
brother tried to discuss the demands of the land owners.
“I learnt they asked each house to pay N150,000 and we were hoping to do that early this year, but this is a surprise,” he said.
Bamidele alleged that the woes of the
residents of the community began from the day they unwittingly hired a
lawyer – one Akinbobola, to hold brief for them. He believed this is
because the community later discovered that he also held brief for the
land owners.
He said that the matter had lingered for a
long time before it snowballed into demolition and homelessness of
hundreds of residents.
Bamidele noted that the lease on the land
on which the house was built, was obtained by his parents and it was
expected to last 60 years. However, he feigned ignorance of the fact
that the Aworis had plans to carry out the act.
He alleged that the most disturbing
aspect of the issue was that Pa Agoro, who descendants allegedly fuelled
the problem, only stood as witnesses to the lease agreement.
He said the original owners of the land,
as specified in the document handed down by his parents, were the
Balogun and Folami families.
He said that he could not claim not to
have heard that some descendants of Pa Agoro; who now prefer to be
called Ogunsakin, had asked them to pay some money, but there was the
need for them to clarify certain points to be sure that they were not
being cheated.
“We got our lease allocation on Church
Street, we had no disagreements with the land owners, we only needed to
get the issues clear. When we got in touch with the original land owners
they dissociated from the move by the Ogunsakins. The people causing
this trouble, just like us, were young when these agreements were
reached many decades ago,” he said.
Meanwhile, in an interview with Saturday PUNCH, a
descendant of the Balogun family, Mr. Sani Balogun, who purportedly
originally owned the land, said his people did not support what the
descendants of Agoro (Ogunsakins) did.
“We are not in support of the demolition
of houses, though the people to whom our fathers leased the land had not
remitted any money to us in the past 12 years. But we were on the verge
of making them more responsible to us when this trouble started.
“The Balogun and Folami fathers from
Awori are the original owners of the land where the Ilaje have lived
since 1971. The Agoros were initially not close to us. But we have been
together for long to deny them, but they did not carry us along in this
act,” he said.
Sani said that when the houses were
marked, following a judgment purportedly delivered in 1990, the Olojo of
Ojo heard of the matter and invited all the parties involved to broker
peace. And all the representatives were asked to produce documents
showing who actually owned the land.
He said the Agoro (Ogunsakin) descendants decided that they would go to court.
He said, “When we reported to the
Divisional Police Officer in Ojo that the houses were marked for
demolition, he said that he could not stop them since they had a court
judgment. When we tried to explain to him that they were going to use a
false court verdict to demolish the place, he asked us to keep our cool,
saying that they should be ready to face the consequences of their
action if our claims were true.
“All of a sudden, on the eve of this New
Year, I got a phone call telling me that a bulldozer had started pulling
down the houses in that community. They had asked the members of the
community to pay N150,000 per house. Some of them paid, while others
refused and argued that they would rather pay to us, especially when we
said they didn’t have our backing and that were not interested in
selling the land bequeathed to us by our fathers.
“I also heard them calling the name
Ogunsakin. To my knowledge, nobody bears that name here. They may have
been dealing with some people who bear that name. Their father’s name is
Agoro and that is what you will find on the lease agreement. We were
told that their father introduced the Ilaje people to our forefathers,
which was the reason why they accepted them for the lease agreement. We
have employed the services of our lawyer to take them up on this case.
We are not happy about what has happened,” he said.
Meanwhile, when our correspondent
contacted a descendant of the Agoro (Ogunsakin) family, simply
identified as Mr. Wasiu to get his side of the story, he said he would
not speak on the telephone and refued to fix a meeting.
He said, “As an ex-police officer, he
know what is right and I will not speak on telephone. Who sent you to
me.” He refused to speak with our correspondent, even though she told
him that she had been trying to get in touch with any member of his
family for two weeks.
A copy of the judgment delivered by Justice I. A. Sotuminu, dated May 18, 1990, and obtained by Saturday PUNCH
stated that the case between the plantiffs, Alhaja Taibat Ogunsakin and
Alhaja Falilat Ogunsakin and one Mr. Sunmonu Adewale involved some
parcels of land that originally belonged to one Pa Ogunsakin in an area
known as Ogunsakin in Ojo, the Badagry Local Government Area of Lagos
State.
When our correspondent eventually got in
touch with Akinbobola, a lawyer and resident of that community alleged
to hold brief for the Ogunsakins, he said they were not his clients.
But Akinbobola said he had a good relationship with all the Omo oniles (land seculators) in the area.
He said that if it was not for his
intervention, the demolition could have taken place earlier in 2003. He
said the court had asked the community and the land owners to go and
settle amicably at the time.
He said, “It will be wrong to call them
my clients. That was when it was agreed that the land borrowers should
pay N75,000 to regularise their position and prevent them from leveling
execution of the 1990 judgment. Going by the leasehold that I see them
holding, the land borrowers are supposed to pay yearly for the land or
forfeit it. But they have not been paying.
“So they should have paid the said amount
and avoided this development. They, however, did not pay; but because I
live there, I am very close to all the Omo oniles, they rarely took a
step without informing me.
“I was not in Nigeria when the decision
to come and demolish the houses on December 31 was reached. I think
whether the judgment on Ogunsakin village referred to Ilaje, were the
houses were demolished or not is just a case of semantics. It is the
same place.”
When asked if the manner in which the
demolition was carried out was proper, he said, “That is assuming that
all things were equal and they had filled the Form ‘O’ and so on. But if
they did not, the court is there.”
Akinbobola said that if the Balogun and
Folami families had a genuine claim to the land, as some people said,
they should have asserted their own titles and spoken up for their
tenants.
“I don’t know anything about the Balogun
and Folami families. They were aware of an existing court judgment but
failed to file an appeal for stay of execution; they should have spoken
up,” he added.
Akinbobola, however, promised to speak
with Wasiu on the importance of granting audience to our correspondent.
But that was not done before the time of filing this report.
0 comments:
Post a Comment