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Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III, has expressed displeasure over a recent protest by some members of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Oyo zone claiming the monarch took over their plots of land illegally.
Reacting to the series of abusive inscriptions written on placards denigrating the person of the Alaafin, the palace felt miffed that the plots of land being claimed actually belonged to the royal family, while threatening to sue the religious group for appropriate punitive measures.
The palace said the concerned religious leaders, instead of getting themselves busy with soul winning, were engaged in campaign of calumny and maligning the person of the Alaafin over materialistic property which is not theirs.
In his reaction, the Alaafin said the publication in one of the national dailies, captioned: “CAN tackles Alaafin over sale of church land’, was misleading and so deserved clarification.
“For the records, the land hitherto named as Ayetoro Scheme in the said publication is erroneously referred to, as the entire area is known as ‘GBOFIN’ which incidentally is one of the ancestral stool land of the Alaafin with approximately 1,118 plots as against the 96 plots claimed to have been owned by CAN; and Alaafin has been exercising ownership and in so doing, some parts of the land were allocated to members of the royal family without any consideration and have been inhabited by them or their allottees for a reasonably long period of time with over 2,000 buildings without disturbance from any quarters, including Atiba Local Government.
“It is also on records that it was through the instrumentality of the Alaafin that such reputable and highly revered religious bodies like Baptist, Anglican, Methodist, Catholic and of late, Pentecostal churches, were provided with auspicious land settlements in Oyo. This magnanimity goes to the extent of the Alaafin providing space for Sunday church service in his palace.
However, it is surprising that not done with this misleading and malicious publication, some people, defying every protocol put in place by the government to check the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, took to major streets of Oyo, protesting over same matter displaying placards with various inscriptions.
“To allege that the Alaafin of Oyo is not only trespassing or attempting to grab the said land, is not only absurd, but alien. It looks not only absurd but paradoxical for a group who supposedly parade themselves as godly people to be involved in fraudulent claims over land that was not only illegally transferred to them by Atiba council as claimed, but also fraught with inconsistencies as against the Alaafin who had surveyed and registered the same land since 1996.
