Ademola Aderemi
Not long ago, three construction workers on a site in the Anthony area of Lagos were shot dead by hoodlums who besieged the place in a commando manner. The daring, masked louts, commonly known as land-grabbers or speculators, stormed the site in two buses and opened fire on the workers.
The incident was poignantly tear-jerking but not novel to those familiar with activities of the self-styled ‘lords of the bush,’ who leave tears, sorrow and blood in their wake anytime they strike anywhere in the country.
A software engineer resident in Lagos who gave his name only as Olamide noted that he was once a victim of land-grabbers when he bought a plot of land somewhere in the Ikorodu area of the state.
Olamide is not the only one with tales of woe regarding the audacious activities of land-grabbers. A worker with a commercial bank in Ogun State identified only as Mrs. Grace was also a victim. She narrated how she was made to pay for two acres thrice but eventually lost the land.
Taming the menace
In 2016, the Governor Akinwunmi Ambode-led administration signed into law the Lagos State Properties Protection Bill aimed at curbing land-grabbing in the state. Later, his counterparts in Ogun and Oyo states followed suit.
The anti-land-grabbing law in Ogun prescribes a 25-year jail term or death sentence for anyone found guilty of the offence, while that of Oyo, known as Bill on Real Property Protection Law 2016, recommends 15 years or a fine of N500,000 for offenders.
Also, in Edo State, a law against land-grabbing was enacted in 2017. Anyone found guilty of the law risks a 10-year jail term or a fine of N2 million. The Oba of Benin, Ewuare II, has also condemned acts of the land-grabbers and placed a curse on them.
Lagos State noted that it received a total of 1,000 petitions through the Special Task Force Against Land Grabbers regarding forceful takeover of landed properties, adding that 350 of the petitions had been resolved in the last one year. But many concerned citizens in the affected states noted that rather than the law scaring the land warriors, it appeared to have emboldened them to forge ahead in their illegal acts.
A bank worker, Mr. Festus Arimoro, noted that the hoodlums know how to evade justice with the connivance of some shady individuals.
He said, “They compromise the criminal justice system. They collaborate with high-ranking police officers, serving and retired top military brass, senior civil servants in the Survey and Lands Departments and judicial officers as well, being aware that their activities will ultimately end in the courts.
“They employ the services of the best lawyers money can hire, warm up to deals racketeers and facilitators who are well connected to the seat of power. They curry the alliance of first-class traditional rulers who would sometimes initiate the crisis through some spurious petitions to the police or state governors, or, in some instances, they may precipitate phantom inter-boundary violence that would prompt some compromised highly-placed government officials to deploy the machinery of government to move in and do their bidding.”
A civil servant who spoke on condition of anonymity said there are no land documents the deadly gangs cannot forge to forcefully take over any land they fancy anywhere.
He said: “They can falsify documents, ranging from government-approved survey plans dating back to even a century to counterfeited certificates of occupancy, in addition to spurious official gazette.
“They are known by different names, depending on the geo-political zones they are operating from. In the South-West, they are known as Omo Onile or Ajagungbale. In Delta and Edo states, they are called Community Boys.
“They often employ the services of vicious hit gangs that have no limit to the quantum of violence they can unleash on anyone to take over any assigned land. Houses are destroyed without recourse to the level of development of the building projects, and there are records of multiple deaths associated with their dastardly attacks.”
Though land-grabbing matters aren’t prevalent in the South-East, pockets of inter-communal crises over ownership of land resulting in violence and deaths are not uncommon.
In March 2020, some elders in Oba community in the Idemili South Local Government Area of Anambra State protested against land-grabbing in the area. They noted that the tracts of land in their domain, which government acquired to build an international market, were being sold by some hoodlums in portions.
Findings revealed that courts in states where land-grabbing thrives are littered with numerous cases bordering on land matters instituted against land-grabbers by aggrieved victims.
Modus operandi, powerful connections
Independent investigations revealed that some leaders of the land speculators sometimes parade themselves as surveyors to give credibility to their acts. One Mr. Benson, for instance, was apprehended by the police for parading himself as a surveyor and terrorising the people of Oko-Olomi community and 13 other villages in Ibeju Lekki area of Lagos while claiming to be working for a particular firm involved in the acquisition of 1,700 hectares of land covering 13 ancestral villages on the outskirts of Lagos.
A teacher, who gave his name only as John and privy to the activities of land-grabbers, said many of the so-called registered property developers offering juicy offers of land and homes to prospective and unsuspecting buyers belong to the gang.
He added that the most sophisticated fraudulent method of land-grabbing is carried out by highly-placed government officials in cahoots with some dubious traditional rulers. According to multiple sources, these influential individuals have distinct methods of forceful takeover of any land anywhere.
If any of these highly-placed individuals is interested in a tract of land and wants it at all cost, he engages in certain actions. He goes first to the lands ministry to make enquiries about the preferred parcel of land to determine if the land (tucked in a prime commercial area) has an approved survey, government markings or is documented in any gazette. The coast becomes clear if the land or village has none.
He then proceeds by filing papers and applications pertaining to the targeted village for “acquisition by government for public good,” which ordinarily would include building of schools, hospitals, recreational centres and courts, among others.
One of the sources said: “He makes sure that all the documents are signed by all the substantive officers related to land matters, including the governor. Without caring about the long history of existence of the village, ancestral shrines, homes and historical monuments, the greedy land-grabbers then move to the lands, armed with the forged documents to raze the villages under the guise that the age-old natives illegally occupied the lands.”
It was further learnt that, most times, they could demolish all houses in the village at odd hours and get bulldozers, loaders to clear the rubble to give the impression that the land is a virgin land that has never been inhabited.
A good case in point is present-day Magodo, which used to be known as Shangisha village. Sometime in June 1984, all the buildings in the village were demolished by the Lagos State government under the pretext that the occupiers were illegal. The military government sacked the entire village, brutalised the landlords and claimed to be acquiring the land for public good. But, today, contrary to the reason it gave for chasing away the real owners of the land, the entire place has been sold to government officials and individuals, regardless of a 2012 Supreme Court judgment that the aggrieved landlords secured (Ref SC 112/2002).
Another example is the travails of the Okunu Eleku family, owners of Oko-Olomi village and 13 adjoining communities in Ibeju-Lekki area of Lagos State. In April 2016, the people of these villages who had been living there peacefully for over a century woke up one morning to the noise of bulldozers and a horde of heavily armed policemen accompanied by a column of grizzly gangs of land speculators. Their mission was to take over the communities, measuring about 1,700 hectares, which they claimed had been sold to a firm known as Toll System Development Company Limited. The agents, allegedly led by one Chief Mutairu Owoeye, brandished an order made by Justice Muftau Olokoba of the Lagos State High Court sitting in Epe that Toll Systems Development Company Limited should recover possession of the land.
Before the villagers could raise their voice, the earth-moving equipment swung into action, pulling down every building in sight, including ancestral shrines and residences of chiefs. Those who dared to resist the onslaught were assaulted viciously, irrespective of age or sex.
Narrating their ordeal, the Baale of Oko- Olomi village, Babatunde Kufuyi, recalled the day as a black Sunday.
He said: “I lost my wife, a police corporal. Women were raped, children assaulted and the elderly ones who could not withstand the rigours of the confusion were left to their fate. Everybody ran for dear life as gunshots came down in torrents upon the community.”
Another leader of one of the communities, Chief Lateef Eleku, said, in the heat of the melee, the youth of the community headed for the nearest police station to lodge complaints, but the police said they couldn’t be of any assistance.
Since then, the communities and the company have been moving from court to court on the matter. Subsequent orders by Justice A.J. Bashua of the Lagos State High Court, Epe, in June 2016 and Justice Ganiyu Safari of the same court, in February 2017, restraining anyone from possessing the land at Oko Olomi have been ignored, it was learnt.
Kufuyi alleged that the company has since fenced the entire land and caused the deployment of heavily armed policemen for a 24-hour watch of the 1,700 hectares.
One of those who witnessed similar turmoil in at Oke-Ira, Ajah, Lagos, many years back, said the victims always have options. “They could head to media houses to narrate their ordeal for publication, go to the police station to lodge complaints or head for the courts by engaging the services of brilliant lawyers who may demand princely legal fees. Unable to meet the demand of the lawyer, they may agree to a barter arrangement to forfeit part of their lands if the case eventually swings in their favour.”
But the three choices before the hapless victims are usually dicey, with slim chances of getting justice, analysts have noted.
First, if they seek media intervention, publicity would be given to the matter by either airing or publishing it with all those involved interviewed for balancing. If there’s no proper follow-up, the case dies a natural death despite being in the public domain already.
Also, if they approach the police, the matter would not see the light of the day except some highly-placed individuals in the corridors of power are contacted to help prevail on them to dislodge the killer squad guarding the hijacked parcels of land.
And if they choose to subject the matter to the legal test, it would be tricky and complex and could drag on for years. Examples abound of lingering land cases over many years.
Besides, developments have shown that as these cases linger in court, the land-grabbers would be busy selling the land without recourse to subsisting litigation.
In Magodo, which was originally known as Shangisha village, the entire area has been virtually sold out by civil servants masquerading as Lagos State government officials. In Oko-Olomi and the adjoining 13 communities, the land there is being parcelled out and sold with different building structures springing up every day. Thus, by the time justice would be served in favour of the victims, those who started the case would have died and the place turned into a new town inhabited by new landlords.
The likes of Pa Adebayo Adeyiga, Alhaji D. Ashitu, Ekundayo Kuponiyi and other Shangisha Landlords Association members who got judgment against the Lagos State government are either dead or old. The Oko-Olomi people and the neighbouring communities are today living like refugees in different parts of Lagos.
Government efforts to curtail land-grabbers
There have been arrests and prosecution of some land-grabbers, even though most of the court proceedings are known to be inconclusive.
In November 2019, the Lagos State Special Task Force on Land Grabbers arraigned three suspected land-grabbers before the Special Offences Court for prosecution on a two-count charge over a land case at Farm Tank Depot, Ijegun Egba, Satellite Town, Ojo, Lagos. In the same month, the agency arraigned 19 suspected land-grabbers, comprising 18 male and one female, who trespassed on a land located in Ogudu Phase II Government Residential Scheme in the Kosofe Local Government Area of the state.
In July 2020, the police in Ogun State arrested three suspected land-grabbers armed with dangerous weapons who invaded and shot at people working on a site at Owolabi Estate, Ota, Ado-Odo/Ota Local Government Area of the state.
In January this year, the Lagos State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Moyosore Onigbanjo, SAN, who is also the chairman of the task force on land grabbers, said the agency dislodged some persons suspected to be land-grabbers from a portion of land on Iju Road in the Agege Local Government Area of the state.