Battle to curb land grabbing rages as task force reins in omo onile

The plan by a retired teacher in Lagos, Mr. Dele Onirawo, to have a roof over his head after 30 years of meritorious service in the state turned to a nightmare as land grabbers, popularly called omo-onile or ajagun gbale in Yoruba parlance, made the acquisition deal hellish for him.  Onirawo, who narrated his ordeal […]

The plan by a retired teacher in Lagos, Mr. Dele Onirawo, to have a roof over his head after 30 years of meritorious service in the state turned to a nightmare as land grabbers, popularly called omo-onile or ajagun gbale in Yoruba parlance, made the acquisition deal hellish for him.

 Onirawo, who narrated his ordeal to our correspondent, said that on three occasions, the land he legitimately acquired at Mowo-Nla, in the Ikorodu area of Lagos State, was re-allocated to more than five people by the omo-onile.

 He said all efforts to gain possession of the land through legitimate means proved abortive as the land grabbers succeeded in eventually giving the land he had paid for to another person who paid them a higher price to secure the land.

 “I was taken to three different lands but the same problem kept occurring. But I finally succeeded in getting a piece of land after the fourth attempt on where I built a three-bedroom flat where I am staying with my family. But I was able to get that land after I had been compelled to pay an extra charge that almost matched what I had paid originally,” he said.

 His ordeal didn’t end there. As the retired teacher recalled, the omo-onile made him to be coughing out all sorts of charges at every stage of the development of the building he was erecting on the land.

 Onirawo was lucky to have eventually gotten a land; many victims of the omo-onile could not. The land grabbers were known to have misappropriated many people’s lands without their victims, who had paid huge sums to purchase such property, getting anything in the end. In the course of the illegal land grabbing, the grabbers had been reported on many occasions to have killed many genuine landowners. At a time in the highbrow Ajah and Lekki areas when families always battled one another over land, killings of innocent land buyers by hired assailants was not uncommon.

Our correspondents report that buying a piece of land in Lagos State and putting a structure on it is usually a tall task due to the activities of the land grabbers who make life unbearable for intending land owners through their violent demands. At every turn of construction, the omo-onile forcefully demand for charges from the owners, with failure to pay attracting wanton destruction of structures and building equipment being used on site, or even, on many occasions, murder of the land owner.

Among demands that land grabbers impose on building developers are foundation, lintel, decking, roofing, soak-away and fence charges.

There had been reports of the entire sack of many communities in Lagos and Ogun states by the omo-onile during clashes by rivals who fought over lands.

 Some property developers also used the omo-onile to secure their land.

Over the years, the nefarious activities of the land grabbers have become a disincentive to the flow of investment in Lagos State, as well as to the security of the citizens.

 Worried by this development, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, in August 2016, signed a law which stipulated a jail term of four years to a maximum of 21 years for land grabbers convicted of the act. Ambode also set up a task force to deal with the problem of land grabbing in the state.

The task force is saddled with the task of reducing to the barest minimum the activities of individuals or corporate entities that use force and intimidation to dispossess or prevent people or organizations from acquiring legitimate interest and possession of property acquired through the state government or private transactions.

 Seven months after the law was signed, the task force said it had so far received 1,200 petitions from members of the public on cases of land theft.

  The state’s Attorney-General, Adeniji Kazeem, who disclosed the figure at the commissioning of the new office for the task force, said 250 of such cases had been resolved. Kazeem explained that the task force was already prosecuting many criminal cases of land theft.

The Attorney-General lamented that people who were supposed to protect the lives and property of the people were often in collaboration with the land grabbers in oppressing the people.

 “The activities of these people, who with their collaborators in high and official places, have continuously enforced a reign of terror on the people. The horror that the people of Lagos, both in the cities and in the rural areas, suffer in the hands of land grabbers, is best imagined than experienced,” he said.

 The anti-land grabbing law seems to be gathering weight due to the number of suspects being arraigned before the courts for violating the law in the state. Last December, a traditional ruler in the Epe area of Lagos State, was arrested for land grabbing at the Oko Olomi area of Ibeju Lekki in Lagos.

The suspect, 58-year-old Segun Muda, was apprehended with a Togolese identified as Segun Sunday and two others for allegedly threatening land owners at the Oko Olomi golf course area of Ibeju Lekki.

On September 4 last year, the police in the state claimed that three persons were charged before a Lagos court for violating the state anti-land grabbing law one month after it came to force. The police said the suspects were caught in the act, as it pledged to continue to enforce the anti-land grabbing law in the state.

Last Thursday, policemen attached to the Zone 2 Command in Lagos arraigned four men before the Igbosere Magistrate’s Court on account of a land grabbing act they committed between 2005 and 2017, in which they unlawfully and forcibly took over an expanse of land belonging to one Alhaji A. R. Tijani at the Akowonjo area of the state.

Some observers in the property sectors have been commending the state for its effort to tackle the menace but believed that more needed to be done to eradicate the problem.

 To  Engineer Ishola Babatunde, a principal consultant with Dominion Onward Estates and Property Limited, a real estate and property development company in Lekki, was happy that within a short time the task force has been able to curtail the activities of the omo-onile.

 “In all honesty, the law has reduced their activities. They operate with caution now, unlike the brazen display of impunity for which they were known. But the task force needs to do more to protect investors property,” Babatunde, who explained that his firm was once a victim of the land grabbers, said.

A university lecturer, Mr. Suleiman Hassan, also commended the state government for passing the anti-land grabbing bill into law, saying the development would stabilise investment flow in the state.

Hassan implored the law enforcement agents to be more alive to their responsibility in eliminating the land grabbing vice in the state. He also advised citizens of the state to cultivate the habit of blowing the whistle on land grabbers, their agents and sponsors with a view to ensuring that the battle against them was successfully won.