Who owns the disputed land on which a church stands at Makoko, Yaba, Lagos Mainland?
This is the puzzle The Act of Apostle Church and members of the community are seeking to unravel, following the invasion of the church last Thursday by the police and others.
The others were the Lagos State Task Force on Land Grabbers, and some people described as hoodlums.
Four persons were feared killed during the invasion.
A top official of the church, Bamidele Ogunmayi, told The Nation that the federal Government, Lagos State Government and the Coker family are laying claim to the land.
He said the church, which was founded in 1962, initially leased an hectare of land from the late Chief Adekunle Coker.
He said when the church grew, they got an approval from the late Coker’s trustee to reclaim four hectares of land from the swamp they are now occupying.
Ogunmayi said: “We paid to them and they gave us approval. Sometimes around 1971, the late Coker’s brother, Abolade, who is now dead, approached the church that he (Abolade) bought the land from one Shekiri and that Shekiri bought the land from the trustee of his late brother (Adekunle Coker). He did not show us any document that gave him ownership of the land nor did he discuss any issue with us that he is now our landlord. The Shekiri in question never wrote to us on his ownership of the land and we did not see him at all.
“We never had any dealings with Abolade, but he told us that he is our landlord and he does not want us to have the additional four hectares of land that we reclaimed. The next thing we saw was a court order on litigation on the land and we followed him to court.
“At a point in time, the Federal Government told us that the property belongs to them because it was a swamp. We paid to the Federal Government; it was under the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) then; they were collecting annual dues from us.
“Along the line, Lagos State Government too came that the land belongs to them. They said we should pay and we also paid to them. They wrote us series of letters about the land and we gave them many documents about the land, which we submitted to the Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development.”
The church, Ogunmayi said, became confused, adding: “We wrote to the trustee to know who our landlord is, but they did not reply the letter nor discuss with us; this was around 1969 and 1971.”
He said the late Abolade took the church to court and lost.
“He appealed the judgement but he died and the case was struck out. In 2003, we saw a letter brought by the children of the late Abolade, claiming that the land belongs to their father and they started another case.”
Judgement, he said, was delivered in 2007 against the church.
Ogunmayi accused Lagos State Government of having a hand in the clash, claiming it is collecting documents from the church and releasing them to “out to their opponent”.
He said: “We are at Appeal Court on the matter and some of the process is at Supreme Court. The police, hoodlums and the task force that came to this community on Thursday just told us that they were from the Ministry of Justice and that they were given order to come and execute judgement; they did not show us anything that they have obtained judgement. They are not Coker; what is their interest in the land matter.
“The atrocity committed by the police in killing and injuring our people and supporting hoodlums to wreak havoc, deserves an explanation. They gave us no explanations when they came here on Thursday. We have no weapon to fight the police with; we are law abiding citizens. We want justice. Let the law of the land take its course against the people that violated our human rights.”
