Tension in Bauchi communities over eviction by military, emirate council

There is tension in five villages in Bauchi over alleged plans to forcefully evict the people from their ancestral land. The Nigeria Army and the Bauchi Emirate Council have been accused of plotting to evict residents of Guru, Kundamu, Rafin Sanyi, Magama and Rugangumu surrounding the Shadawanka Barracks.    Last Sunday, residents of the areas […]

There is tension in five villages in Bauchi over alleged plans to forcefully evict the people from their ancestral land.

The Nigeria Army and the Bauchi Emirate Council have been accused of plotting to evict residents of Guru, Kundamu, Rafin Sanyi, Magama and Rugangumu surrounding the Shadawanka Barracks.   

Last Sunday, residents of the areas held a peaceful demonstration where they blocked the busy Bauchi-Jos Road for over four hours.

It took the intervention of the Security Adviser to the Bauchi State Governor Brigadier General Marcus Yake Rtd, who pacified them with a promise of the state government’s intervention to resolve the lingering faceoff.

However, apprehension has heightened in the villages following a stakeholders’ meeting which ended in a stalemate on Thursday.

The meeting held at the DSS office in Bauchi, but both state ministry of lands and Bauchi Emirate Council representatives insisted that the communities must leave the area because the state government had donated their land to the army.

The communities have accused the army and government of being unfair to them.

Spokesman of the communities in Rafin Sanyi, Habibu Abubakar, told Daily Trust on Sunday that the forceful confiscation of their land started in 1999 when army personnel seized many farmlands from the community under the pretext of security concerns.

“We reported the matter to the Bauchi Emirate Council and they returned some portions of the farmlands to the owners then and from time to time they’d encroach on lands and that was how we continued to live with their antics. Initially, we used to pass through the barrack into the town but one day, they closed the road, a situation that hindered our children from going to school because we have a mini river and if it overflows, there will be no access road to the village because the blockade.”

“Governor Isa Yuguda’s administration intended to build a culvert so that we can have access road out of the village to the town but the army rejected the idea and stopped the project, insisting that the land did not belong to us. When the government made moves to construct a bridge and contacted the army for the project, they still blocked the initiative. We have been living in hell since then because they want to confiscate the entire land from us. These lands are the only thing we inherited from our forefathers,” Abubakar said.

The spokesman further revealed, “We have three issues which we are begging the Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed to look into. One is that the presence of the army in our community has negatively affected our wellbeing, particularly the education of our children. Our parents were not educated, but we have the opportunity to be educated and therefore we are appealing to Bauchi State Governor to come and build a school for our children as well as a health facility.

“Secondly, we are appealing to the governor to intervene by ensuring that authorities of Shadawanka Barrack pay compensation for indirectly killing our parents and grandparents through inflicting palpable fears that led to heart attacks and frustration for years because majority of them died as results of heart attack and depression from illegal confiscation of their ancestral land by the military. The governor should also promptly rescue us from the recent illegal caging of the people under pretext of fencing the barracks.

“Thirdly, we are begging the governor to establish a demarcation to liberate the communities from the brutality, intimidation and abuses from army personnel because on many occasions, they have stormed the community at night and perpetuated all manners of brutality on people without any provocation. There was a time they raided the community; brought us out of our of homes, humiliated and denigrated our elders. We have videos of how the army harassed and insulted our married women, just to intimidate our people out of our ancestral land.”

Corroborating the ugly trend, the Village Head of Rafin Sanyi, Malam Haladu Abubakar, told Daily Trust on Sunday that residents of Rafin Sanyi and neighbouring communities live in perpetual fear and confusion, “It is true that our lands were measured by authorities in the past but no single Kobo was paid as compensation to anyone. These communities had lived here for over 200 years. I was born and brought up here 80 years ago. My grandfather was born here and we have no other home except here; now, someone will not just come and ask us to vacate. The army met us here about 45 years ago and we mutually lived peacefully for years. They too can attest to this,  but unfortunately these few years, the attitude of the army to the communities has become worrisome and scary.

 

“What we want is for the government to allow us to continue to stay in our ancestral home because we have a clear boundary between the barracks and our community. During the peak of Boko Haram activities, the army dug a ditch to demarcate their area, but overnight, they said the entire land belongs to them. However, nobody ever told us that our land has been given to the military, and we didn’t receive any form of compensation,” he said.

Haladu said, “I remember vividly some years back, one Ladan Kura from the emir’s palace in Bauchi send a delegation with a letter which I don’t know the content because I am not literate enough to read a letter written in

English language, and instructed me to sign. Out of respect for the traditional institution, I signed the letter. After I signed the letter, the delegation explained that from that moment, we were given 20 months notice to vacate the area. After a while, they returned and said that our quit notice has been reduced to 12 months. When they came last November to start measuring our houses, we rejected the move because if they were sincere about valuing our properties, they should have commenced from farmlands and later houses and then the rest of our properties but we discovered that they were not sincere so, we rejected the plan,” Haladu said.

The village head said “Today is exactly seven years without electricity in Rafin Sanyi village because the army disconnected the power lines. You can see the electricity poles and cables which former Governor Ahmadu Mu’azu installed but the army disconnected the light and we have no powers to challenge their decision. The reason we are calling on the Bauchi State governor to intervene is that when they forcefully evict us from our homes to another bush, are they not terminating our lives prematurely?

“We are appealing to Governor Bala Mohammed to come to our rescue, he should sympathise with us by intervening because relocating us from our ancestral homes will aggravate our existing austere socioeconomic condition because we don’t have a school for our children, no potable drinking water, aside extreme poverty. There’s no health facility and the only road passing through the barracks was blocked during the Boko Haram activities. They created another passage for our use as the only road going to the city, but they are now planning to cage us. Despite the threat and intimidation by the army personnel, we are not leaving our ancestral homes,” Abubakar added.

On his part, representative of the village head of Kundamu village, Abdulrazak Muhammad, said “Today is exactly two years we’ve been living in apprehension. Sometime in 2019, some soldiers numbering about 20 stormed our village alongside one civilian who they claimed was representative of the Emir of Bauchi, saying they were in the village to know the true history of the entire villages surrounding the barracks. We told them the history and that no compensation was paid to the owners of farmlands where the barracks was built and before they left, they said that whatever decision was taken will be communicated through the palace of the Emir of Bauchi.”

Muhammad said, “Two days after the incident, our village head was called and told that the army had met with the executive governor of Bauchi as well as the Emir of Bauchi and resolved that the army will fence the whole areas and don’t want to see anybody or villager within the vicinity. One day after, they surmoned our village head again to inform him that the quit notice has been reduced to 12 months. We wrote several letters to the office of the Governor, Bauchi State House of Assembly, State Commissioner of Police, Director DSS, National Human Rights Commission, Bauchi Emirate Council and other agencies. 

Muhammad explained that there was no positive response from their letters, adding, “One day, we just saw some labourers digging our lands and we asked them to stop work because we will not allow them cage us, and they stopped the work. The next day, State Director of DSS called us for a meeting in his office and demanded why we stopped the army from building their fence. We told him that the army had exhausted their land and encroached on our land. After one week, he called us again and informed us that his findings revealed that there are many people who are yet to be paid compensation for their land. 

“I remember that meeting was attended by army personnel, officials from the ministry of lands, the Security Adviser to the Governor Brigadier General Marcus Yake Rtd, and they pleaded with us to relinquish 100 meters to the army to fence the area because the military discovered that hoodlums used the area to enter and steal their motorcycles from the barracks and on condition that the government will compensate the 100 meters before they would continue with the building of the fence but two days after the meeting, they deployed workers and continued fencing. They also exceeded the 100 meters up to 369 meters without paying us the compensation.”

Muhammad explained, “When we observed what was happening and tried to stop the work again, the army deployed military presence to the area led by one Major Haliru who threatened that whether we like it or not, they will forcefully build the fence. We still have a copy of a letter from the immediate past DSS Director which claimed to have advised the state governor to send officials to measure our land for compensation.

He added, “The resistance of our people compelled them to withdraw and after sometime they returned to forcefully take over the remaining land which we vehemently rejected. The army later summoned a meeting at the barracks led by the Garrison Commander who insisted that they want to fence the area. We refused and the meeting was rescheduled to hold in Kundamu village where he still reaffirmed that they will fence the whole area for security reasons, and that if we don’t agree with their decision, we should go to court. Our elders at the meeting said the community cannot wait to challenge the army in court. The meeting was held Saturday but on Sunday morning, we saw the engineers and labourers returning to continue the fencing which prompted the Sunday protest because we don’t have anywhere else to go,” Muhammad said.

 

Seventy-five-year-old Al-Mustapha Ahmed, a resident of Rafin Sanyi village, told Daily Trust on Sunday that the people of the village are living in fear of the unknown and fear of forceful eviction from the army to an unknown destination. 

“I was born and raised here and I remember when they came to establish the barracks, nobody paid any compensation for many farmlands of our parents then and today, they want to confiscate the remaining parts of the villages. 

“We inherited these lands from our forefathers who also lived and died here for 200 years. 

“Our major fear is that when they evicted us from our ancestral land, particularly with the current security situation in the country, where are they going to relocate us? we might likely face more challenges.

“We are appealing to both the federal and state governments to come and establish a clear boundary and separate us from their intimation and harassment because we don’t want to leave our ancestral homes,” Ahmed said.

All efforts made to get the reaction of the officials at Shadawanka Barrack proved abortive and the Public Relations Officer of 33 Artillery Brigade Bauchi, Major Yahaya Kabara, declined to pick several calls put to his mobile phone and did not respond to the text message sent to him.

When contacted, the Information Officer of Bauchi Emirate Council, Babangida Hassan Jahun, asked for time to respond, saying, “Please give us time to consult with the council officials to respond appropriately.” 

The Security Adviser to the Bauchi State Governor, Brigadier General Marcus Yake Rtd, who had earlier agreed to respond in a text message, could not be reached as at press time.