The Edo State Coordinator of Protection of Government Property, PGP, Eugene Okoloise, has indicted the immediate past Godwin Obaseki’s administration of land grabbing, accusing some of its officials of having diverted and sold to some individuals the 27 hectares of land retrieved from the Rubber Research Institute of Nigeria (RRIN) meant for a park.
Giving an update on his discoveries in the course of his fact-finding visits to ascertain the level of encroachment on government land, Okoloise berated some foreign companies, especially Chinese firms, for allegedly conniving with corrupt individuals to deny the state of revenue in land use charges and taxes that they ought to remit to the coffers of the government.
He also disclosed that over 30 schools have been recovered from intruders while the taskforce had received over 3,000 petitions in less than three months that it was set up
He lamented that not less than 150,000 buildings in Edo State were sitting on government land which were illegally converted.
According to the PGP coordinator, “Ours is to protect government property over time. A lot of government properties in Edo State have been taken over. Seventy percent of the moats in Benin City have been taken over by individuals.
“The most attacked institutions in the state are the schools, including tertiary institutions. We have recovered about 2000 plots from the Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, taken over by land grabbers.
“The UBTH outreach in Ekpoma, the houses there were destroyed and the land sold to individuals and they are building houses there.
“Over 150,000 houses in Edo State are on government land because most of these communities just deforest a place and start selling government land.
“We are going to recover all. If we say a new Edo is Rising, we should rise with the new Edo.”
Okoloise said “We have been able to recover a lot of landed properties for schools. Some of them will destroy the school land and erect private buildings, like Ujoelen Secondary school where they built a brothel inside the school compound.
“The brothel has been seized and sealed. Iyeoba Secondary School, the community, divided the school land into two parts and started selling part of it to developers”.
Citing the case of a contractor who allegedly connived with a community to shift the beacon of a school to enable them sell the school land, Okoloise disclosed that also in Auchi, the land of a public school was sold to a proprietor to build a private school inside a public secondary school.
He said in another school, the football pitch was sold to build a personal house noting that, “they did not even bother to remove the goal post which is still standing behind the house”.
Some Officials of Obaseki Administration Accused of Selling Off 27 Hectares of Land Recovered from RRIN
