Farmers accuse military of displacing them from Govt allocated land in Lagos

Some corporate farmers from the Diaspora and Nigerian Farmers have protested their alleged displacement from their farms which produces crops and animal worth millions of naira on a daily basis. Speaking during a protest at the Lagos State House of Assembly, Chairman Afero/Eluju Mowo/Mutaku commercial farmers, Wale Oyekoya, said they had a dream of building […]

Some corporate farmers from the Diaspora and Nigerian Farmers have protested their alleged displacement from their farms which produces crops and animal worth millions of naira on a daily basis.

Speaking during a protest at the Lagos State House of Assembly, Chairman Afero/Eluju Mowo/Mutaku commercial farmers, Wale Oyekoya, said they had a dream of building a better Nigeria and for this, they brought back their life savings and foreign investment to invest in Nigeria.

Oyekoya said: “Those dreams were crushed when on the morning of the 11th day of December 2023, in a brutal display of violence and utter carnage during the late season rains around 11:15 am that day they were violently invaded and brutally attacked by elements of the Nigerian military.

“We are not cutlasses and hoes farmers, we utilise the latest in mechanised machinery and equipment imported from China, US and France and practice farming on a Commercial scale thereby contributing to a large percentage of crop production to the Country and to Lagos State.

“The Nigerian Government in its wisdom instructed the Nigerian Army, the same Army supported by the taxes paid by the very same farmers, to redeploy its resources from protecting the territorial integrity of Nigeria to attack its Nigerian citizens and the soldiers mercilessly taunting the farmers with the fact they cannot do anything because there will be no repercussions and they will never be held accountable for their actions.

“There was no letter of warning, phone call, Memo demand or indeed any correspondence that the farmers have done anything wrong or even that they should vacate the land. Even a declaration of war generally requires some sort of warning nothing of sort took place.

“Instead the Nigerian Military, men whose salaries and livelihoods depend on taxpayers’ money beat the living daylights out of the hand that feeds them. This is really what the Security Vote is now being used for.

“This is why we Nigerians pay our taxes. So that we can be terrorised, tortured and mocked by the very people whose livelihoods we are sponsoring.

“The government is always asking for foreign investors, but who wants to invest in a country where one day you are carrying out your farming activities to prepare for the Christmas and New Year festive sales, with Billions of Naira worth of your life savings, the next day you are running for your life and dodging bullets as if you are in apocalypse IV!

“We sold off our successful companies, investments and houses from all over the world to invest in this our country Nigeria, We used the money to finance, fencing, designing farmland, landscaping, commercial fish ponds, piggeries, poultries, rabbitries, cattle ranches, hydroponic and greenhouse farms of different foods and cash crops for exports and local consumptions, snail pens, general abattoirs, etc. and invested sophisticated mechanised agricultural machines, preservative and processing electronic equipment, electricity generating plants, farmhouses, irrigation machinery, only to have it all callously destroyed not by brigands, bandits or Boko Haram but by the same Nigerian government that claims to be seeking foreign investments, claims to be trying to alleviate the food crisis when that could not be further from the truth.

“As  law-abiding citizens, we reported the military invasion to the government in December and on January to the the governor and Speaker of the House and nothing has been done and we are loosing investment money daily as the military men will not allow us to enter into our farms.”

The military has not responded to the allegations as of the time of filing this report.