From Jeff Amechi Agbodo, Onitsha
The people of Umueze Ogwugwu, Oba community, Idemili South Local Government, Anambra State have taken to the streets protesting the wanton destruction of their houses and farm lands by suspected land grabbers.
The protesters numbering over 500 comprising the elderly, men, women and youths, accused the developer of Oba International Market and its agents of encroaching into their lands.
They displayed placards with various inscriptions and cried to government to come to their aid by stopping the alleged land grabbers from demolishing their property.
Chairman of Umueze Ogwugwu, Mr. Chuba Oranusi, blamed their ordeal on the developer: “We woke up on November 12, 2022, to see armed navy and police personnel with submachine guns, Ak47 and other weapons accompanying bulldozers that came to destroy our houses and farms without any challenge. The government of Chinweoke Mbadinuju in 2001 gave MICPAN 30 hectares to develop an international market which they had built some market structures and the remaining land was sold to drug distribution market and Aluminium market.
“They don’t have any other land left because the boundary is at a stream and they now cross over the stream and started selling our land to the extent that they entered into our homes and started demolishing our houses, fences and destroying our farms. They are still threatening to continue with the demolition of our structures. They said that the instruction was to recover every inch of recover 138 hectares land.
So, when we followed them with the survey plan; they came with, it was discovered that it covered every breadth of our village land and crossed over another village called Isu.”
He alleged that the group failed to build the market, operate and handover to the government, but instead, they used the land to borrow money which incurred some debt that was paid by the Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON).
A youth leader, Uchenna Obiegbu said: “We are law abiding and that is why we are appealing to state government to intervene before it is too late to handle. For how long will we continue to watch some intruders invade our land destroying our property without any reaction or action, it won’t happen again after this appeal.”
Seventy-three-year-old Nze Benneth Oranusi whose building was partly demolished cried to the state government for urgent intervention to stop the lawless activities of the land grabbers.
Oranusi who said he had lived all his life in the village wondered how people will come to dispossess them of their ancestral land in the name of building a market: How can land grabbers come and tell us that government gave them our land for market development when their market land was far away from our home.”
Managing Director, MICPAN, Mike Ebule, denied the allegations, saying that the company did not encroach the village land but pulled down illegal structures in their own land.
He claimed that government through the Surveyor General’s Office has the survey plan of the land and had visited the place to map out their own land: “We had also paid compensation for the land acquired and have titled documents given to us by the government who revoked the land ownership.”