The elders and community leaders of Akute, Baale Akin-Osin and
Oke-Aro communities in Ifo Local Government Area of Ogun State have sent a
Save-Our-Souls (SOS) to the Ogun and Lagos State governments over a seven-day
demolition ultimatum, reports NaijaAgroNet.
The ultimatum issued to landlords and occupants of estimated
60,000 houses, include mosques, churches and public schools within the Water
Pipeline area, affected the building housing the headquarters of News
Express.
According to the News
Express reports, shock arising from the sudden notice by the Ogun
State Urban and Regional Planning Board has claimed two landlords while several
others have taken ill.
A press conference held Thursday in Akute, the elders under the aegis
of joint Community Development Councils (CDCs), who also claimed dual citizens
of Lagos and Ogun states, under the All Progressives Congress (APC), wondered
if the ultimatum was a way of paying them back for tremendously voting for APC in
the last general elections.
As law-abiding citizens, the community leaders and elders say
they are not against the Adiyan Water Project by the Lagos and Ogun State
governments which is designed to benefit the public. According to a grand
patron of the CDCs, Alhaji Ganiyu Busari, they want the Ogun State government
agency to re-consider the measure of the specified area to be demolished:
rather than the expansive 50-metre “set-back”, this could conveniently be
reduced to 20 metres “set-back,” so that less houses would be affected.
“We wish to intimate the government that most of the affected
house owners are aged and retirees who have no steady means of livelihood.
Pulling down their homes will further aggravate their predicament. We also wish
to call the attention of the government to the fact that any meaningful project
should be people-driven,” Busari said.
*Isaac Oyima with additional
report from News Express
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