Engineer Seyi Makinde, the governor of Oyo state, has been asked to order Mr. Kehinde Akanni, the chairman of Ibadan south-west local government, to leave the church’s property alone and to make up for what has been dubbed illegal property destruction to Anglican Church’s land in Odo Ona Apata Ibadan.
In order to forcibly annex the land next to the church, the council chairman had escorted several local government representatives there with a bulldozer.
The chairman of the council allegedly stated that the site would be used for official purposes.
The property worth millions of naira belonging to traders on the site was damaged, and the church land itself was exposed to erosion, according to Venerable Dr. Adeyemi Jesulola, the vicar in charge of St. Paul’s Anglican Church Odo Ona Apata, who spoke out against the incident on Friday.
He said that “the local government sent a-day quit notice to the tenants and we immediately wrote a letter to the DC state CID who called all the parties involved luring the chairman, Mr. Akanni for a meeting”
The priest affirmed that despite the police’s involvement, the council boss went ahead to demolish the place, and three of the perpetrators were arrested during the act.
“We want it to go beyond arrest, people on the land must be compensated and the church land has also being tampered with. I believe this is bringing a big dent to the government that we know it’s the People’s government, I’m sure that the governor would not be in favor of this at all
The painful thing there was that we feel abused, cheated and disrespected and the people on the land, their fundamental human rights have been trampled on, more so when we feel the government in the state at the moment is for the people, wants a government that we all love and applaud”
Ven. Jesulola also want the governor to caution the chairman to stay off the land.
“Now there are cases in court on that land, they should know that if they do anything outside the decision of the court, it is going to be a contempt of the court
It was a clear case of abuse of power and a way to subject the law abiding residents of the area to untold hardship. These are where people feed every day at the instance of the church and enjoy their daily bread for over twenty years ” He noted.
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