By Daud Olatunji

HUNDREDS of villagers in four communities of Ado-Odo-Ota Local Government Area of Ogun State have reportedly fled their homes after some hoodlums suspected to be land grabbers stormed the area. The  four communities reportedly  under siege include  Adekoyeni, Ilewo Alaga, Abule Tisa  and Ajambata.

When Vanguard Metro visited some of the villages,  they were deserted as most of the villagers had fled and were now living in their farms to avoid being attacked and harmed by the hoodlums. They reportedly fled their homes after they were attacked in July 25, 2016 and August 5, 2016.

The affected villages are situated at Once Araromi Orita village near Atan-Ota along Atan-Sokoto road,  in Ado-Odo-Ota LGA of the state.

VM gathered that the hoodlums reportedly dropped the name of former President Olusegun Obasanjo in their bid to grab the lands. According to sources, the villagers had at a time offered a substantial portion of land to the former President ostensibly to secure protection from the hoodlums.

But a man said to be close to the former president (name withheld) took the advantage of the situation and allegedly grabbed a large portion of the said land for himself. Village heads in the area have, however, said that when they met the former president over the matter, he denied ever sending anyone or group to lay claim to land in the area on his behalf.

Bill against land speculators

Speaking with our correspondent, some of the community leaders  appealed to  the Ogun State government to urgently pass into law the bill against land speculators in the State. The Village Head  of Adekoyeni Village Chief Tajudeen Sodiya said the bill, if passed into law, will definitely curb the activities of land grabbers and return sanity to the State.

Chief  Sodiya while speaking on the ordeal of his people in the hands of the land grabbers said the once peaceful villages had become a ghost town. He also reiterated the claim that  some land grabbers were using the name of the former  President  to grab land  unjustly at Adekoyeni, Ajambata, Araromi, Orita and Oluwanishola (aka Abule Teacher) villages.

He said: “In their desperate bid to seize one land or the other, the thugs have been harassing us on a daily basis, thus preventing the people from going about their businesses”. He stressed the urgent need to checkmate the unlawful actions of the land swindlers. According to him, if there is a law criminalising land speculation in the State, the ugly incidents of land grabbing will come to an end.

*Some of the villagers protesting the invasion of their land by hoodlums

“It is a common practice among the land grabbers to create confusion in and around the community by depositing a corpse at the village or plant guns on some members of the village, accusing them of murder or armed robbery, purposely to have their way into the communal land. Once this is done, they immediately raise false alarm and their sponsored collaborators in the police will storm the area and have the villagers arrested and detained before seeking and obtaining a remand order from the magistrate Court which does not have jurisdiction on capital offences.

“The agents have turned the villages to their base, and it is beyond the power of the villagers to confront the land grabbers who seem to enjoy the support of influential personalities within and outside Ogun State. The new trend for them is the use of soldiers to harass, humiliate and physically assault the village heads,” he alleged.

Against this backdrop, the village heads have called on the Ogun State government  to borrow a leave from Lagos State by passing a law criminalising the conducts of land grabbers otherwise known as Omo-oniles in  the State. “It is our prayer that Ogun State should adopt the Lagos option in checkmating the activities of the land grabbers and allow peace to reign in our communities,” he added.

It could be recalled that the Ogun State House of Assembly recently made a move to checkmate the illegal activities of land grabbers and speculators through a Bill for the Prohibition of Forcible Occupation of Landed Properties Law 2016.

The Bill which had scaled through the second reading at the plenary, when passed into law, is expected to curb the nefarious activities of land speculators who often dispossessed people of their landed property.

The Village Head of Ilewo-Alaga,  Chief Folayan Edun, lamented that the touts have taken over their lands. He said: “The land grabbers destroyed our cash crops and sent  us away  from our houses. The hoodlums brought a corpse which they deposited on a piece of land so as to implicate us.

“These land grabbers said they are representing Chief Obasanjo and when we met Chief Obasanjo,  he denied sending anyone to claim our lands. We have written to the Alatan of Atan, the Olota of Ota and the Alake of Egbaland. But even this has not stopped these hoodlums from tormenting us”.

The Village Head of Abule Baba Tisa,  Chief Folohunso  Soetan, claimed that the hoodlums used some people in Police uniform to harass them.

While speaking on the crisis in those villages,  the lawyer to the villagers,  Dauda Fasasi said, the matter has been taken to court. Fasasi said,  the court had warned all the parties to maintain the status quo pending the determination of the suit.