- Customs officials chased us out of our house with guns – Family
- Case in court – Hameed Ali’s lawyer
The Edunjobi-Ogundare family in Lagos are currently engaged in a battle to reclaim a parcel of land allegedly taken from them forcibly by the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Col. Hameed Ali.
The two plots of land, located near the Abraham Adesanya Estate in the Ajah area of Lagos, and covered by a Certificate of Occupancy, numbered 73/73/1996, has become a subject of dispute between the family and the customs boss.
A member of the family, Isiaka Ibrahim-Ogundare, told our correspondent that the disputed land was allocated to the descendants of the Edunjobi-Ogundare family several years ago as a land-owning family in Lagos and the C of O was issued to the family by the Lagos State Government in June 1996.
Ibrahim revealed that the family had lived in a bungalow it erected on the said two plots of land for decades, after selling part of the expanse of land it had in the area.
He alleged that the Customs CG suddenly emerged from nowhere, claiming ownership of the land and had since then been using armed soldiers and Customs operatives to intimidate and harass members of the family in a bid to appropriate the land.
Narrating the incident, Ibrahim said, “We saw a letter written by L’avocat Legal Practitioners on the instruction of Col. Hammed Ibrahim Ali, informing us to vacate our family property and that if we did not vacate within seven days, immediate action would be taken to recover same without recourse to any persons or authority; not even a court of law.
“Giving effect to the content of the letter, on the 17th of March 2018, some unknown persons came to our property to demolish our fence. They were escorted by some Customs officers armed with rifles. These armed men supervised the illegal demolition without any court order or legal process and when our family members expressed dissatisfaction with the demolition, the armed men threatened to shoot us, and as a result, we kept quiet and fled.”
Ibrahim disclosed that when their lives came under more threats, the family reported the matter at the Ogombo Police Station and the Investigating Police Officer assigned the case asked the contending party to produce a proof of ownership of the land, but they couldn’t.
“They only produced a vague receipt of a sum of 100,000 (one hundred thousand naira for an unnamed land and signed by an unknown person,” he said.
He stated that even though the police waded into the matter, this had not stopped the Customs boss and his armed men from destroying property on the land.
Having observed that the Customs boss would not be pacified, Ibrahim disclosed that the family had to inform a member of the Lagos State House of Assembly, representing Eti-Osa 1 Constituency, Hon. Noheem Adams, who tried to resolve the matter amicably.
He said but when efforts by Adams to resolve the matter could not achieve the desired result, the family contacted the office of the Lagos State Task Force on Land Grabbers, met with the Secretary, Mosunmola Balogun, and submitted a petition No. 2368, dated 3rd April, 2018.
On the strength of the petition, Ibrahim said the Customs boss was invited, but he never showed up and his solicitors did not make any appearance, either.
Ibrahim further said, “When this option failed, we then contracted our Solicitors, Elias Adedokun & Co. as well as Michelle Solicitors & Advocates, to take the matter to court so that an injunction could be granted to stop Hammed Ali from taking our family property. And even after an action was filed by our solicitors, Hammed Ali continued to construct the fence and subsequently locked us out.
‘’However, even when we got an order of injunction against Hammed Ali and other unknown persons on the 11th April 2018, police officers from SARS as well as from Zone 2 have been threatening us and have been looking for us, despite the court order. They have now been monitoring the property in order to arrest and eject us from the property, saying the court order is inconsequential.”
When our correspondent contacted Mr. Tope Fadahunsi, whose law firm is one of the two briefed by the complainant, he confirmed that the matter had gone to court and expressed the hope that the Customs boss, as an enlightened individual, would obey the order of the court.
Efforts by our correspondent to get the reaction of the Customs boss was not successful as he did not pick calls made to his phone. He also did not reply text messages sent to him.
The Customs boss’ lawyer, Abdulrahman Adegoke, who is the Principal Partner, L’avocat Legal Practitioner, refuted the allegations that Ali was trying to forcibly and illegally appropriate the disputed land.
He, however, declined to speak further on the matter, saying the matter was now before a competent court of law and that speaking on the matter would be prejudicial and preempting the court.
