By Yemisi Kadiri (Lagos State Correspondent)
In what looks like a surprise demolition exercise, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), at the weekend, pulled down to the rubble, a residential property valued at over N70 million belonging to a former Editor of the Saturday Guardian Newspaper and currently the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of Abeya News Online, Mr Felix Oguejiofor Abugu.
The said property located within a plot of land at the Runview/Mercy Estate reportedly owned by FAAN, which is about six kilometers to the Murtala Mohammed International Airport (MMA), Ikeja, Lagos, was demolished by FAAN in the early morning of last Friday, April 28, 2023, along 16 other residential structures within the Estate.
NIGERIAN NEWSLEADER Newspaper gathered that the demolished property which is presently occupied by Mr Abugu and his family, was purchased sometime in 2011 by the Journalist from the family of one Baale Adejumolu of Isolo, Lagos. The affected residential properties at the Runview Estate, fenced off an undeveloped portion of the said land belonging to FAAN which is essentially a vegetable farm.
However, there were a number of reasons why FAAN carried out the surprise demolition exercise in the said Estate. First, according to available information reported by a Lagos based online media, Century Post, is that the "narrow swathe of land running from one end of the Estate to the other and housing the demolished buildings, with a street in-between to separate them from another set of houses, is “a red zone”, meaning that it is too close to the airport for any non-aviation development to take place, “a very untenable reason,” according to a source, “given the closeness of the standing buildings to the demolished ones.
"Two, is that the stretch of land is encumbered, meaning, according further findings, that underneath the land are structures that cannot be built upon, such as a disused fuel pipeline running from NNPC Ejigbo to MMA through less than half of the land bearing the demolished houses (FAAN inspectors who dug underneath were later to confirm that the stretch bearing Mr. Abugu’s land was unencumbered).
"Three, is that the houses had to be demolished for an internal road to pass from one end of the Estate to the Airport Road and create a short-cut for residents who currently have to take a much longer detour into the Estate, as an earlier attempt to cut a road through to the Airport Road was reportedly thwarted by some powerful landlords who didn’t want the road to pass in front of their property.
"Four, is that the Landlords/Residents Association wanted to punish “a stubborn developer who backfilled the canal we had dug as a natural boundary between us and FAAN, leading to the sale of the plots of land that came out of his effort by the Adejumolu family”, an official of the Association disclosed, hence the incitement of FAAN against the “stubborn developer” and his line where landlords had already started receiving their regularization notices before they were withdrawn again.
"Five, is that some officials of FAAN allegedly wanted their own plots of land in the Estate which they couldn’t access when the Adejumolu family steel owned the property, and found it convenient to demolish the houses, many of them multi-million naira edifices, with intent to parcel out the lands to themselves much later".
Mr Abugu, however, told journalists in Lagos, that: “I am a distraught land owner here and my family is on the street right now, but let’s be clear about one thing: neither the government of Lagos nor its agencies had anything to do with the demolitions per se. The land belongs to FAAN and it simply paid for the services of the concerned agency of Lagos to demolish our houses and, I must add, unjustifiably. So, away with the drivel about Lagos targeting anyone or group!”
Abugu, a former editor of the Onitsha, Anambra state-based ORACLE newspaper and also an ex-deputy managing director of the New Telegraph Newspaper, narrated that: “Every single landlord in what was once known as RICHFIELD ESTATE Estate before it changed to RUNVIEW/MERCY ESTATE Estate after ownership of the real Estate reverted to FAAN, bought their land from the Adejumolu family. I bought mine in September 2011. Some bought much earlier. But all of us bought from the Adejumolu family on the basis of a court judgment shown to each and every buyer by the family, indicating that the land belonged to the family.
“However, ownership of the land reverted to FAAN after another court ruling whereupon FAAN took over the Estate and renamed it RUNVIEW/MERCY ESTATE and invited landlords to come for ownership regularisation’. Even those of us from the side that has now been destroyed were invited but were later denied the privilege of regularizations for reasons that were never clear.
“Indeed, I believe that the reasons for this wicked demolition of our property that some bought 15-20 years back and subsequent displacement of our families and disruption of our lives, are as untenable as they are varied. The truth is that FAAN had no justifiable reasons to demolish our property. If it regularized houses even across the street, what was so offensive about our side of the street that they had to destroy our houses at a time like this and send our families out on the streets?”
Abugu however lamented his unfortunate situation, saying that this development has put him and his family in great distress and emotional trauma.
“How does one handle this type of situation? This is a property that one put in practically everything one had to be able to develop and live with one’s family and now gbum! and it is gone, just in one hour of merciless destruction! I just don’t know what to do". NNL.
