CITIZENS COMPASS – THE Ogun State Government has inaugurated a 10-man Special Task Force Committee that will deal with land-related issues occasioned by improper and incomplete legal documentation, land encroachment and land grabbing in the state.
While inaugurating the task force, the Special Adviser/Director-General of the Bureau of Lands and Survey, Arc. Segun Fowora, charged the committee to work with other security agencies to ensure strict enforcement of government and private property rights in the State.
Fowora, in a statement signed by Mrs. Temitope Adewunmi, Press officer, Bureau of Lands and Survey, mandated them to reduce the activities of land grabbers to the barest minimum, noting that the setting up of the task force was as a result of the need to protect investors as well as maintain law and order.
He added that this move by implication will encourage the verification of legal claims through litigation rather than resorting to violence.
The Director-General lamented the menace of illegal developers, farmers, land grabbers, and hoodlums encroaching on the developed or undeveloped property of the government as worrisome, adding that windows for ratifications are open within the approved areas covered in the OLARMS for proper documentation.
Arc. Fowora also disclosed that the State House of Assembly was in the process of amending relevant sessions of the law to meet recent realities that would exclusively deal with the activities of land grabbers by prescribing appropriate stiff punishment for offenders.
He urged individuals and investors to desist from the illicit trade, just as he warned land thugs on their unlawful activities, saying the State government would bring the full weight of the law to bear on anybody caught forcibly taking another person’s property.
The Acting Surveyor General in the Bureau, Surv. Oladele Ewulo, urged the task force to be good ambassadors of the Bureau and redeem its image, adding that they should be committed to their work and help align all the other sessions to the revenue drive of the State.
In his response, the Head of Enforcement of the Task Force, Mr. Fatai Adeboyejo, acknowledged the importance of the assignment, promising that members of his team would not fail the Bureau in the assignment assigned to them.
Inauguration of the Taskforce became necessary to tackle land grabbers activities in tje State which have rendered many residents homeless and sent scires to their early graves.
A case in point is that of Onibukun community, in the Atan-Ota area of Ogun State, which threw residents into panic after suspected land grabbers engaged one another in a gun battle in July 2023.
Another is that of Ipaye in Sagamu Local Government where many were sacked from their homes while some were maimed and killed during the invasion of land grabbers.
In less than a decade, land grabbers activities were rife in some communities under Ado-Odo Otta, Ayetoro and Ifo axis to mention but a few.
