The Nation Newspaper

Tag: demolition

  • Rivers communities protest demolition

    Landlords and tenants in Umuebule 2, Umuebule 4 Etche, Diamond Estate, Saipem Road, Umuebule in Etche Local Government Area and those in Satellite Village in Obigbo, Oyigbo Local Government Area of Rivers State have appealed to President Goodluck Jonathan and Governor Rotimi Amaechi to save them from being rendered homeless following the decision by the Nigeria Gas Company (NGC) to demolish their houses to pave way for gas pipelines.

    Speaking at a protest march, they said the NGC has marked their houses for demolition.

    Some of the messages on their placards read: “President Goodluck, please hear us; Governor Amaechi, governor of all governors, help us”; “Please compensate us for our properties” and “No compensation, No demolition.”

    Speaking through their lawyer, Mr Victor Ogwomo and their leader, Mr Samuel Durugo, the protesters complained that on August 14, some persons from the Pipeline Right of Way (PPROW) committee made up of some government agencies and the Rivers State Ministry of Environment came and marked their houses for demolition.

    The committee gave them only 14 days notice to move out.

    The demolition has begun.  They said four houses were demolished before they were prevailed upon to stop.

    Ogwomo and Durugo said: “We are not against the Federal Government laying pipes for its gas project but they should give the people adequate notice and compensate them adequately to enable them re-locate.”

    They claimed that the houses have government approved building plans and are outside the oil and gas right of way.

    “So, if you are pushing us out, where do you want us to go to?” they said.

    They said they should be given the same treatment their counterparts in parts of Galaxy Estate, Location 15 and Okpulor areas received from Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC).

    SPDC, they claimed, “demolished about 500 houses in these areas but the house owners were paid adequate compensation before they moved.”

    However, an employee of NGC, who spoke on grounds of anonymity, said the company would pay compensation “but let them move out first so that the gas pipeline can go on.”

     

  • Demolition: Ogun landlords decry non-compensation

    Landlords and residents who lost their homes following the demolition of structures to pave way for a major road construction in Ifo Local Government Area of Ogun State have petitioned Governor  Ibikunle Amosun over their fate.

    The affected landlords, in a statement under the aegis of Yakoyo-Odozi Landlords and Residents Association yesterday, expressed surprise that about seven months after the demolition of their homes, the government had not deemed it fit to compensate them.

    The statement by the association’s Vice-Chairman, Prof. Olukunle Macaulay, and secretary, Mr. Kola Ewejobi, noted: “Our concern is that the people affected who were comfortable before the demolition have been subjected to poverty, health hazard and psychological illness.

    The landlords added that much as they appreciated the efforts of the governor to bring development to the area and having accepted the demolition of their homes as the needed sacrifice, they also expected the government to play its part by compensating them as promised.

  • Jang orders demolition of bombed market

    The Plateau State Government has given directive to the Jos Metropolitan Development Board (JMDB) to demolish its market at the central areas of the city capital, Jos.

    The JMDB market, popularly known as Abuja market comprises over 200 locked up shops and stores.

    It was badly affected by the twin bomb blast in Terminus Market, which killed over 100 traders.

    The impact of the heavy explosions shook the story building to its foundation.

    The General Manager of JMDB, Brigadier General Musa Gambo(Rtd.), confirmed the directive while speaking with reporters in his office yesterday.

    He said: “The building hosting the Abuja market has become a death trap as a result of the twin bomb blast that rocked the market on the 20th of May 2014.

    “The walls of the building have cracks all over because the explosions caused serious damage on the foundation of the building.

    “Government has carried out assessment on the building and found out that continuous occupation of that building can lead to more loss of lives its citizens because that structure can collapse any time without warning.”

    He added: “The market has been marked for demolition since it has become obvious that it is not safe for human occupation which was why the market was shot down since May this year. Now government has concluded plans to demolish that market.

    “Government has therefore directed all traders who own shops at the market to evacuate their stock within seven days for the demolition to commence. Any trader who ignores this directive does so at the risk of his or her goods in the market.”

    Gambo confirmed he has met with all the traders and explained why the shops would be demolished.

    He advised traders affected by the planned demolition to seek alternative spaces available at Rikkos, New Market, Katako and Kabong Satelite markets.

  • Oyo panel on demolition to begin sitting Aug. 28

    Oyo panel on demolition to begin sitting Aug. 28

    Oyo State Judicial Commission of Inquiry on complaints arising from demolition of buildings over Environmental and Town Planning Regulations’ contraventions between May 29, 2011 till date, will begin sittings on August 28.

    The commission, which was set up by Governor Abiola Ajimobi, will be sitting at the House of Chiefs, Parliament Building, Secretariat, Ibadan at 10a.m each day.

    It has requested for the submission of written memoranda by individuals, groups or organisations affected by the demolition.

    A statement by the Secretary to the Commission, Mr. Waheed Ajuwon, in Ibadan yesterday, said anybody wishing to submit memorandum should produce 12 copies.

    It said this should be address to the office of the Commission’s Secretary, Room 64, Office of the Governor, Secretariat, Ibadan between 9a.m. and 4p.m.

    The statement added that all memoranda should be ready within the next seven days.

    It indicated that such memoranda should be accompanied by relevant documents, including approved building plan, photograph(s) of such buildings(s), and proof of ownership of the affected property.

    It also stated that any other person wishing to give oral evidence could also appear personally at the public sittings.

    The panel, to be chaired by Justice Okanola Akintunde Boade (rtd), was constituted on Monday, August 11.

    It was charged with the responsibility of receiving complaints of irregular demolition of properties on the grounds of Environmental and Town Planning Regulations contraventions and determining the genuineness or otherwise of such claims among others.

  • Oyo raises panel on demolition

    Oyo raises panel on demolition

    Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi has inaugurated a judicial commission of enquiry to look into complaints about his administration’s Urban Renewal Programme.

    Inaugurating the commission in his office on Monday, Ajimobi said although only illegal structures were approved for removal by the government, irregularities cannot be ruled out during implementation.

    The commission is to identify cases of irregular demolition and recommend compensation to claimants; identify cases of arbitrary allocation of land and recommend sanctions for culpable public officers; and recommend ways to prevent recurrence.

    The commission’s Chairman, Justice Okanola Akintunde Boade (rtd.) said the panel would execute its duties diligently.

    Members are Mr. Soji Taiwo, a town planner; Mr Sikiru Salami and Bamidele Abolarin, representing the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA); Mr. Kola Olofa, an estate surveyor; Dr. Ademola Aremu, representing the Academic Staff Union/Civil Rights society; Mr. W. A. Ajuwon, the secretary and Mr. I. O. Tijani, the panel’s counsel.

  • Protest over planned demolition

    Protest over planned demolition

    The indigenous people of Jahi 1 Village in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have staged a peaceful protest over plans by the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) to demolish over 300 houses in the community, vowing to resist such action.

    The protesters, who were expressed their anger against Senator Bala Mohammed’s administration, carried placards with some inscriptions that read “FCT law and policy should benefit the people, not political patrons,’ ‘ “Who paid? Who received Officials or conspirators?”  and “Our farmlands taken, our livelihood decimated, our homes destroyed, our children violated and our lives threatened. Is that fresh air?”

    The chief of the community, Alhaji Adamu Dogo, explained that the protest aimed at preventing the FCDA from carrying out the proposed demolition of houses in the community, which he described as act of wickedness and inhuman on the part of the FCT Administration under Senator Mohammed.

    Chief Dogo said: “The community is currently mourning the death of a woman that died as a result of the demolition threat by the FCT authority, because her house was among the marked ones. The tension and trauma she experienced on receiving the sad news of the threat caused her death.”

    Lamenting that the FCT Administration does not regard them as fellow mankind was why they could enter any community to demolish their only source of existence.

    “We are not against development, but the officials of the FCDA have no human heart. We have to send our children to schools. That is why we admit tenants in our houses. They are building houses and giving out lands only to non-indigenes. No single indigenous person has been given any allocation in the FCT.  We want to live in peace and the FCT Minister should give us that peace.

    According to the monarch, they are yet to recover from the onslaught of the FCDA, when they came back about two weeks ago with well-armed military personnel and marked our houses for demolition, without giving us any explanation why they want to demolish our homes.

    “Things are not done that way. We are all human beings and citizens of Nigeria. It was wrong for them to come into my community to mark houses without first informing the chief of the community. Moreover, we are still in dialogue with the FCTA. But they refused to leave, insisting that they are going to mark the houses, which we allowed them to do.

    “Then on Friday, June 6, the same officials came back in the company of well-armed military men to demolish our houses. This was even as the administration failed to compensate or resettle the indigenes. I must confess that we have been pushed to the wall, that we had no choice but to resist the troop of soldiers sent by the FCT Administration to our village,” he said.

    He stressed that they will not allow the administration to toss them around without any proper arrangement for the well-being of the natives and residents, saying they will not be cowed into leaving their ancestral homes.

    Old women carrying loads on their backs were not left out of the protest.

    National Coordinator Greater Gbagyi Development Initiative (GG-DIN), Prince Gbaiza Gimba also explained that since the vast land now known as FCT was taken over by the Federal Government in 1976, the indigenous people of the FCT have literarily been under “perennial harassment by government officials and private land grabbers using military and police personnel to dispossess them of their farmlands and homesteads without any arrangement on how to compensation or resettlement them.

    Gimba said: “Zhayi community woke up one day to discover that they had been ambushed by a detachment of the military not to smoke out Boko Haram insurgents but to demolish the homes of law-abiding citizens. Just to enable some powerful individuals take possession of lands given them by the government.

    “But for the intervention of the Almighty God, many lives and property worth billions of Naira would have been lost had the military detachment thrown caution to the wind and shot at the unarmed civilians who rather vowed to be killed than watch their property go under the teeth of the bulldozer.  “This is because the only means of livelihood left to the original inhabitants, whose farmlands have been consumed by development is by renting their homes to other Nigerians who daily flood Abuja in search of greener pastures.”

    The group, Gimba said, called for the review of extant land administration laws and policies since the root of “corrupt practices in the administration of the FCT lay in the initial slipshod and deficient laws that relate to the creation and administration of the FCT and in the offshoot policies, regulations and laws that followed these initial sloppy ones. A review of these laws should be done in line with international conventions and laws.

    “Review or revoke all the improper allocations and bring racketeers to book and enact a law setting up a development trust fund to meet human development needs of the original inhabitants of FCT whose means of livelihood which is land have been taken away from.”

    The protesters also pleaded with people of good conscience in Nigeria to prevail on the Federal Government and the National Assembly to save them from final economic strangulation and annihilation by meeting their demands and make appropriate legislation to protect the indigenous communities of the FCT.

  • Who ordered demolition of private school in Effurun?

    The efforts of the Delta State government to clean up Warri consumed a private school last week.

    The school on  New Layout Road, Off Jakpa Road,  was crushed by the bulldozers of the special sanitation committee.

    The Proprietress of God’s Favour School, Mrs Oyobor Oche, said she had no prior notice that her school had violated any rule, noting: “The school is about 20 feet from the road.”

    She expressed suspicion about the exercise, saying it happened at an odd hour and called on the state government to investigate the action.

    The owner of the  property on which the school was located, Paul Obuh, while expressing surprise at the development, described it as a deliberate act of suppression by the vice chairman of the Delta State Waterways Security Committee, Chief Boro Opudu.

    Opudu, however, denied any link with the demolition of the property involved, saying that he had been out of the state for a long time. He also denied a claim that he had an eye on the property.

    Obuh, while speaking to Niger Delta Report, alleged that Opudu had approached him in the past to buy the plot, an offer he rejected, adding that his relationship with the politician had since been less than cordial.

    Obuah said: “The pale loader was already out of this place when I came, it was in the next place, I went there and saw Boro because the information we got was that it was Boro who brought them because of this my land, claim ing that there is a church here making noise to disturb him.

    “Before then though he had approached me to sell the plot to him, which I refused, when he was building he said the back of his building was too tight so he needed me to sell part of my land to him, but I said no that I didn’t want to sell, but I gave him three feet by hundred and only told him to pull down the fence at the back there for me. People were telling me to collect money, but I said no that at least he’s going to be my neighbour. After some time he started approaching me to sell

    “I believe he has an avenue now to raid the place and that is why he did this because if you check the whole Warri, I don’t think there’s a place they destroy like this; destroy hundred by hundred with the whole property, the blocks, the granite. After the caravan, he still went inside into the school, packed everything together and smashed them. You can see for yourself that this is a deliberate act”, Obuh said.

    Opudu said:  “ Am I the government that is doing the work? What concerns me with this; why will I want to buy plot of land there again, for what? Even where I am now I am thinking of leaving. I am building house at home. I’m from Ogbe-Ijoh. What am I going to do with his plot of land? Destroy to do what? So, he’s pointing finger at me that I was the one who destroyed the place?”

    Niger Delta Report learnt that the matter had been reported to the committee. Mr Linus Chima, a member of the committee and Press Secretary to Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan,  said the matter would be investigated.

     

     

  • ‘Stop forceful eviction, demolition’

    The Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer, Wesbanch Engineering Limited, Adegoke Alani, has said he is waiiting for the time when the government would not use force to evict and demolish homes belonging to Nigerians.

    For him, it is bizzare for the government to wake up and conclude to demolish any section of the city without a proper dialogue and understanding with the people affected.

    Alani said urban renewal must evolve into a policy based on less destruction, more on renovation and deliberate investment. “If people are carried along at every stage of the urban regeneration process and are part of the programme with adequate compensation paid to them for resettlement, then it is no longer a forceful eviction,” he said.

    According to him, when people that are to be affected on any government urban renewal policy are contacted and carried along on the process, that there will be no room for grievance and agitation, since their interest will be taken care of.

    Alani urged the government both at state and federal levels to carry the people along and give them what is adequate for a resettlement to forestall agitation, as well as respect their rights to habitation and living.

    “For graceful urbanisation, good access roads, hospitals, standardised schools, sewage control, leisure parks, shopping malls, and markets and other civic structures in addition to affordable housing to the people are part of an integrated and deliberate urban renewal strategy,” he admonished.

    He advised state governments to, as a matter of necessity, be determined to touch and add values to the lives of the people with programmes and policies, especially by simplifying access to land and building approval without stress through the use of a bureau comprising professionals, who are major stakeholders in real estate development.

    Alani also advised the Federal Government to collaborate with the states to enhance effectiveness in road construction and maintenance.

    “The government should explore both human and technical capacity of the states to ensure that the network of road projects fared better,” he said.

  • ‘Demolition has ruined us’

    ‘Demolition has ruined us’

    There was confusion among traders in Dutse Market in Bwari Area Council as a result of demolition of the market by the council’s administration.

    Our correspondent gathered that the traders were seen scrambling to rescue their goods even as the bulldozer tore down their shops. People who came to the market to buy things had to go home without buying half of the things they had wanted to buy.

    “You know today is the usual day when many people come to the market to sell their wares. So, with the confusion, some people do not know where to get what they wanted.  I would have expected the demolition to come on a day that is not as busy as today,’’ Ngozi Okeke, one of the people who had come to buy things in the market, said.

    Some traders who spoke with our reporter stated that the council’s idea to modernise the market and bring it to the contemporary standard was a good one, though they lamented that the time given to them to vacate the market was very short for them to afford the money for the shops.

    One of the traders, Mrs. Dorcas Kanayo stated that the new market is commendable, but added that considering the amount for the acquisition of the shops which ranges from N1.5m to N2.5m , the time was too close for them to get the money.

    “I am happy that Dutse Alhaji is going to have a befitting standard market where traders and buyers would feel comfortable to operate. But our concern is that the council should have also considered the traders who would move to the new shops, by giving us enough time to look for the money. They should stop the demolition so that we can run around to gather the money for the shops.

    “For me, I do not have enough money now to acquire one of the new shops when completed, but if we are given up to March, I believe most of us that truly desire to trade in the market will be able to get the required amount,” she said.

    Another trader, Emmanuel Augustine whose shop was among those demolished in November last year, said t since the demolition of his shop, he has been selling outside the market so that he could make enough money to acquire the new shop when completed. He expressed his worry over how he would survive now that the market was being demolished.

    “Since my shop was demolished in November last year, I have been doing my best to make enough money to enable me to afford the new shop in the market that is being constructed. But the truth is that it has been very difficult. I want to appeal to the leadership of the council to consider the plight of the traders by making the process of getting a shop less cumbersome and stopping the demolition.

    “This is where we get our livelihood and many people depend on us. They should assist us by making the processes easy, so that at the end, everybody will be happy and ready to support the government of the council led by Mr. Peter Yohanna,” he said.

  • Illegal demolition threatens peace in Akure

    Illegal demolition threatens peace in Akure

    The relative peace in Akure, the Ondo State is being threatened following illegal demolition of structures in the outskirts of the state capital.

    Last Saturday, residents of Onigari area, along Irese road woke up to see a bull dozer pulling down their buildings on a purported Court order allegedly obtained by one Dr. Olumide Abiola.

    As the earth-moving equipment commenced the mass destruction of the buildings, the aggrieved residents trooped out in thousands to protect their rights which were being trampled upon by Abiola. The buildings in question were built on a disputed family land.

    Owners of the buildings were said to have purchased their plots of land several years ago from the original owner, Late Madam Oluwamarin Famese, with some of her children also involved in the sale.

    It was learnt that the problem started when Late Famese died and her death paved way for one of the children Dr Abiola to institute a legal action against the other children among whom is Mr Ojo Omojowo, who is presently residing in the area and also owning several buildings there.

    At the end of the protracted crisis, the Court gave judgment that since the land had not been demarcated for everyone (in the family) to have his or her own share, the entire land according to the presiding Judge Justice Yemi Akintan-Osadebe must be vested on the family with its head, Chief Moses Ogundulu as the person who has the prescribed authority to dispose any part of the land.

    Though, it was gathered that the said litigant is not the head of the family, he was said to have gone to Court without the knowledge of the owners of the existing structures on the land to obtain court order to take possession of the land. The court it was learnt was misled into believing that the owners of the buildings were duly served.

    It was a rude shock to the house owners when Policemen in large number led by the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) Okuta Elerinla accompanied Dr Abiola to serve the Court Order to the people in order to take possession of their land.

    After few hours, some hefty men armed with dangerous weapons reportedly stormed the disputed area to ensure that some houses were pulled down.

    However, the timely intervention of Policemen from Okuta Elerinla, Ijapo Police Station and the Area Commander’s Office saved the situation from degenerating into bloody skirmishes.

    No fewer than eight residents were allegedly macheted by the hoodlums and were rushed to nearby private hospital.

    However, calm was eventually restored on the orders of the Area Commander, Edward Ajegun, who promised that his office would write a comprehensive report with the advice of the Police Commissioner and Commissioner for Justice, Eyitayo Jegede (SAN).

    The affected residents have appealed to Governor Olusegun Mimiko to save their souls and urged him to investigate the true position on the issue for justice to prevail.

    They said the demolition of their buildings under any circumstance would bring untold hardship to them, particularly as most of the affected landlords are Public Servants who had obtained loans to provide shelter for themselves.

    The Legal Adviser to the Petitioners, Mr Dapo Agbede described the development as unfortunate, stressing that he has filed relevant papers to counter the action in Court and protest the injustice meted to his clients.

    He affirmed his trust in the Judiciary as the last hope of the common people.

    Agbede advised the affected people to maintain peace on the issue, promising that the issue would be resolve.