Your Excellency Sir, we write with utmost respect and sense of responsibility to draw your attention to the ongoing mass demolition of properties – houses, farm crops, land, fences and other investments belonging to our people by one Mr Paschal Nwakamma, your SA on government land recovery and the Commissioner for Housing, Hon Bede Eke following their attempt to forcefully and illegally take our family lands in the name of your government, which we truly know is not authorised by you.
Your Excellency Sir, the above land, measuring over 73,000 square meters, situate and lying in Emeke Agbala and called OTULAOGWUGWU land is the inheritance of several families in our village from their ancestors and not a communal land. In the year 2018, the former commissioner for Housing under the administration of Owelle Rochas Okorocha, Chief Anthony Umezurike and his agents in our community conspired with a fake third party private property developer to take our said land on behalf of the later. They conscripted some natives and brought them to the Palace of the traditional ruler of the community, gave them one cow and a cash money of one million naira (#1m) and fraudulently obtained their signatures and rolled it into what they called Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). Your Excellency, it is pertinent to disclose to you that many of these persons who were gathered and induced with the gift to sign the MoU have no land in the area. Everyone is aware that the process of land acquisition requires engagements with the rightful owners. It also follows laid down procedures that involve Revocation, Survey, Valuation, Crop Enumeration, and payment of adequate compensation to affected land owners. Non of these steps were taken. We have said earlier that the land in question is not communally owned. It is owned by separate families. The implication is that only the land owners can lawfully donate title to another party.
When information of this fraud blew up, the lawful land owners protested, repudiated their consent, and Tony Umezurike ran away. Ever since, the land owners have maintained strong hold on their lands, cultivating, selling, and building on it. In fact that land is the only farmland available to present and future generations of Emeke Agbala village to live on, having surrendered the most part of our land to Federal and State governments for the establishments of the Head quarters of Anambra Imo River Basin Development Authority and Comprehensive Secondary school etc, among other private establishments.
Your Excellency, we have known that the appropriate department of government that has the authority to acquire land is the Ministry of lands. The Ministry of Housing lacks capacity to acquire land. It is not their duty. This is the true state affairs. As we write to you this open letter, Sir, there is no record of this land being acquired by the Ministry of lands. Persons who have purchased lands in this area for investments have always approached the Ministry of lands for confirmation of non incumberance, and the reports have been positive. The office of the Surveyor General of Imo State is not aware and has no record of documented acquisition of the said land either. In the course of acquisition of land by the Ministry of lands, the office of the Surveyor General is deeply involved, and the internal survey personnel are usually the ones involved in the process. But in the present case, Mr Nwakamma and Hon Bede Eke procured the services of an external surveyor who is believed to be involved in the scheme to dispossess us of our land for their private gains.
What might be described as the most shocking and gruesome experience of all time happened to us on Wednesday, 14th November 2024. On this day, your SA on government land recovery, Mr Paschal Nwakamma and the commissioner for Housing, Hon Bede Eke invaded our quiet and peaceful village with a frightening assemblage of heavily armed police men, accompanied with Bulldozers and Catapillars and began to demolish both living and fully completed buildings, fences, and farmlands bearing matured crops and the entire landscape. Your Excellency, Mr Paschal Nwakamma and Hon Bede Eke did not give any opportunity to our people to harvest their crops by way of notice for even a day. Those who travelled out could not have the chance to remove their valuables. They crushed bungalows, upstairs and even blocks moulded for sale. Not even sand heaps meant for work was spared. Everything was levelled. All buildings on the land, some of them cladded with some of the expensive modern metro tile roofing sheets were brought down. Paschal Nwakamma and Hon Bede Eke gave instruction to their fierce looking armed police men never to allow any native access to the site while the demolition was going on. While this demolition was going on, the former commissioner for Housing, Chief Tony Umezurike was sighted with Hon Bede Eke and Mr Paschal Nwakamma on the site as they dished out instructions to the catapillar operators. Chief Umezurike’s presence at the site, even when he’s no longer an official of government establishes strong evidence of mutual collaboration in the acquisition saga with some external interests.
Some of our people who heard of the demolition and went to protect their properties were given severe beating by the police. Until this moment, no fewer than ten youths who attempted to question the action of these oppressors had their Android phones forcefully taken away from them by the police. Some innocent masons working on the site on the demolition day were picked up and detained at the police station in Owerri and later released.
Your Excellency Sir, we wish to restate the assurance of our source that the operation of Mr Nwakamma and Hon Bede Eke did not have your imprimatur because every evidence shows clearly that the land in question was not acquired by either your administration or the one it succeeded. Mr Paschal Nwakamma and Hon Bede Eke are acting a script of those who wanted to use the Ministry of Housing to illegally acquire our land for the fake third party property Developer, and by extension for themselves.
It will surprise your Excellency that even on paper, the actors, who include some collaborators from within our community, have appropriated to themselves certain proportions of the land. Some people are getting ten plots and others, five, according to their categories and roles played by each in the eventual illegal acquisition. Unconfirmed information stated that a fake allocation of the land is already in circulation selling at #15m per plot, which money is, perhaps, not paid into the coffers of government.
Your Excellency Sir, we bring this petition to you, knowing that you cannot compromise the happiness of those you govern by side-stepping this callous and wicked manner the commissioner of Housing and SA on government land Recovery have treated our people, putting us in a situation of penury, quandary and hopelessness. We plead that you mitigate our suffering by stopping further demolition of our property, investigating the situation properly, and taking action against anyone found to use this act to drag your administration into disrepute.
Your Excellency, we trust in your capacity to make example of those who hide under your government to commit crimes against fellow citizens. It is a most unpardonable act for this group to subject our people to a state of mental and physical dislocation and torture using their positions as government officials.
We seek justice and protection for our people, and we trust you will not deny us.
Thank you for listening to us.
Signed;
- Chief Luke Ogaram
- Theodore Ajaero
- Celestine Akuwudike
- Ifeanyi Origie
- Ben Akuwudike
- Nnamdi Azu
- Ben Opara
- Pst Bernard Ibecheole
- Amos Agor
- Echemozo Ofurum
- Eugene Ibecheole
- Edward Anamelechi
- Kachi Orji
- Longinus Osuji
- Bartholomew Onyemegbulam
- Kelechi Chima
- George Òhiri
- Mobile Osuji
- Kelechi Hedo
- Policarp Osuji
- Anthony Ohiri