BY TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
The Vice-Chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Prof. Eyitope Ogunbodede, some other principal officers of the school, and journalists were on Monday attacked by some armed hoodlums over land dispute between the university and its host community.
It was gathered that some land grabbers, who are indigenes of the ancient town have been hell-bent on taken some parts of the land belonging to the university for personal use. Some of the land speculators had built houses on the land and have ignored warnings by the university management to exit the gazetted land.
The Ife community, according to findings, had mounted an inscriptio “Oduduwa Estate” on a part of the university land situated along Parakin-Ife road in the town, where the university also built hostels for its students. The host community, according to Ogunbodede, has refused to allow the management access nor use the hostels it built on the land.
Another attempt by the university management team led by the Vice-Chancellor to access the land was met with strong resistance by some hoodlums who were armed with guns, cutlasses, clubs and other dangerous weapons.
Ogunbodede and some top management staff who were taking journalists to the site were attacked and made to turn back at the entrance of the affected land situated at Parakin-Ife Road in the town.
Though no life was lost in the melee, but the hoodlums shot sporadically into the air, brandished cutlasses and other dangerous weapons, harassed members of the university community and chased them away.
Speaking after the attack, Ogunbodede disclosed that the university has been in a very serious situation with the host community as far as the university’s land is concerned adding that the land grabbers have refused to allow students use the hostels that were built.
He said, “The land in question is part of the gazetted land, and you can see the kind of action that people put up there. You will notice that we have hostels there which have been completed over the last two and half years, but we have not been able to occupy those hostels because I have said that I don’t want to lose any life. I don’t want to lose any of our students. We are terribly short of accomodation for our students but it doesn’t worth the life of anybody.
“You can see today (Monday) that only God saved us, there were shootings but thank God, nobody was armed. We will try to continue to maintain peace with the community because the university cannot exist without the community. We will try as much as we can to continue to reach perfect understanding with the community in spite of all that we have witnessed. We have succeeded over many years and we will continue to do so. But just to let you know that we are in a very serious situation as far as OAU land is concerned and some people want to grab the land at all cost. But we will continue to maintain peace and unity with the community,” he added.
Asked if the town’s traditional ruler, Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Ogunwusi, was aware of the crisis over the land, Ogunbodede said, “Ooni is very much aware of this and he has given us his words that he is doing his best to ensure that sanity prevails. We are not attaching this issue to an individual but to the community.”
