| Each day, I feel like
committing suicide
...Says man whose bakery was demolished by Lagos State govt
By MATTHEW DIKE
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Until that fateful day in May this year, Joseph Adewoye,
chairman and chief executive officer of Uncle Joe Bakery in
Ajegunle area of Lagos, could never have envisaged the cruel
fate that was to be his lot. But since May 2, 2008 when his
bakery was demolished by the bulldozers of Governor Babatunde
Fashola’s task force on illegal structures, life has
become a bitter pill.
The demolition, he says, has denied him and his family their
means of livelihood, keeping them in perpetual state of hunger
and impoverishment.
Since the incident, suicide, he confides in Daily
Sun, has never been too far away from his mind. What
keeps discouraging him from taking the fatal plunge into the
lagoon is the strange feeling that the government will soon
do something to ameliorate the suffering of his family, he
says.
“Since the demolition of my bakery, my family has been
suffering. I have not been doing anything. I’m now so
abjectly poor that I cannot feed my family. It is difficult
to believe this, but it is true. The demolition has suddenly
turned me into a beggar. I find it difficult to train my children
in school. I’m tired of this sinful world. At times,
I feel like committing suicide but something in my heart keeps
telling me that the government would soon come to our aid.
So, I just keep praying.
“I must tell you that I have already lost hope in life.
Unless the government does something, I’m finished.
The frustration in life is so much. I’m now a laughing
stock and each time I remember this, the idea of committing
suicide would come to my mind.
According to him, even his erstwhile tenants have turned him
into an object of contempt.
“A man who rented some square metres of my land where
he breaks and sells firewood was owing me one year and six
months rent. He was paying N1,200 per month. But after the
demolition, he told me straight to my face that he was no
longer going to pay me since the land belongs to the state
government. When he said that, I felt so bad because I bought
the land with my money and got clearance from the local government.
But for my tenant to tell me to go to hell, that the land
does not belong to me gave me sleepless nights. He is still
using my land without paying me.”
His efforts to dispose his N25 million baking machines to
raise some money have also been unfruitful. “My machines
worth about N25 million are still lying outside at the mercy
of criminals. I don’t have where to keep them. They
are too big. You cannot keep them in a room. I’m ready
to sell them but I have not seen anybody interested in buying
them,” he laments.
Adewoye says he harbours no ill feelings against the Lagos
State Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola. All he wants is some
compensation. “I’m not against government policy.
But I’m saying this because it has affected my means
of livelihood so badly. My brother, I cannot sleep in the
night. I will be thinking till the next day. No matter how
hard I tried to sleep, it would not work and I now depend
on sleeping tablets.”
The baker described his wife as a mere petty trader whose
business is grossly inadequate to feed the family. He says
whatever savings he made in his bakery business have since
gone into the education of his three children.
“I have been begging now to get money to feed my family.
You can see how life changes. Now I can only go and look at
where I packed my machines and go home,” Adewoye says.
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