Residents of Ifeloju, a suburb community in Ife, Osun State, are living in fear of the unknown after months of relative calm.
According to The Nation, the fears of the community’s residents stemmed from threats by land grabbers to once again disturb the tender peace in the usually volatile area.
The Newspaper reports that the latest bone of contention is the sum of N100,000 imposed on property owners of landed property in the community by alleged land grabbers parading themselves as “original owners” of the community.
The residents alleged that there are plans by “the impostors” to increase the N100,000 levy on every plot of land to N200,000 any moment from now.
“We hear that they are planning to impose N200,000 per plot on those that failed to pay the initial N100,000. And those who are yet to develop their own plots may lose them.”
A source in the community, who spoke with The Nation said he was also a victim of the “extortionists”, said the same fate would befall those who have developed theirs but did not pay the initial N100,000 levy.
Some aggrieved residents who spoke with The Nation were irked by the fact that as at 2016, a plot of land in the area sold for N180, 000.
Community under siege
The tension in Ifeloju was palpable when The Nation visited during the week. Residents spoke in hushed tones for fear that they could be marked by the land grabbers as enemies, based on their past experiences.
One of them who spoke with The Nation said: ““When they were collecting the N100,000 levy, it was war. They would come on bikes in threes, with one of them as the rider while the two others would be brandishing guns and machetes.
“If they ask for the receipt of the N100, 000 and you fail to produce it, they would forcibly stop your workers from working.
“The most annoying part of it is that some of these hoodlums would collect money from you but it would not be receipted.
“They were so brazen that on their own, they were reselling the lands of people who could not produce receipts to higher bidders. It was that bad.”
Another resident, who described his experience with the hoodlums as chilling, said: “How I wish you had seen them disturb people who were working. They come with thugs wielding guns and machetes, and if you try not to pander to their wish, it could be fatal.”
Also narrating her bitter experience, a middle aged woman who bought half a plot in the community said she suffered a heavy loss in the end.
“They told us after a meeting that each person should pay extra N50,000 for half plot and N100,000 for full plot,” she recalled.
The next thing she saw the next time she visited the land, she said, threw her completely off balance.
“I discovered that the land had been cleared and the trees on it had been uprooted. Soon after I got to the place, some bricklayers arrived and prepared to start work.
“I asked them to disclose their identities and they claimed that the land belonged to someone else. I tried to call the person, but the person was talking with annoyance and efforts made to pacify him were abortive.”
She recalled that shortly after her conversation with the purported new owner of the land, some people came with machetes.
“They threatened that if I stayed longer on the land, something would happen.
“That forced me to call the man that facilitated the deal but the man started pressing buttons with the people he bought the land from. Yet, the purported new owner refused to show up.”
She said aside from paying N50,000 for the half plot of land in 2016, she was again made to pay N50,000, which she was told was for the traditional ruler of the community.
“They said it was for Oba. I was not there. I don’t know, but I paid through the person I bought the land from. He was the one that told me they said we should pay extra money.
“The trouble was much on the land then.”
She said that having paid all kinds of surcharge, raising the additional N50,000 levy became difficult for her, hence she had to pay it in three instalments.
Another source close to the community told The Nation that the tension in the community appeared to have reduced, but not until each land owner had paid N100,000 levy per plot of land.
He said there was every cause to fret about the rumoured levies, considering what some of them went through at the hands of the land grabbers in the past.
He recalled, for instance, that he did not know peace until he had paid N300,000 levy on a piece of land which he bought about five years ago.
“What we are hearing right now is that those who have landed properties here or who have buildings but failed to pay the initial N100,000 levy would be asked to pay N200,000,” he said.
He added that before he paid the N300,000 levy for the three plots, the hoodlums had destroyed about 500 of his building blocks.
He said since neither the palace nor the police could not help him, he had no choice but to dance to the tune of the thugs who claimed to be the original owners.
He said: “I told them we should reach a compromise and asked them how much they were going to collect from me. That was when it was agreed that we should pay N100,000 on each plot. Those with one acre paid N1.3 million.”
The Nation gathered that when the issue of N100,000 levy started some of the
people lost their lands, especially those whose landed properties were close to the main road.
“Those who claimed to be the original owners of the community took away the land from some of the landlords and sold them to other people and nobody could do anything about it,” a resident lamented.
There are fears in the community that if the self-proclaimed land owners go ahead with the N200,000 levy, then many who have not lost their parcels of lands could be on the verge of losing them. He said that paying N100,000 to the agents of the monarch is no guarantee that a land owner would not lose it to the hoodlums, saying there were cases of people who after paying the ‘levy’ also lost their entire land or part of it because they delayed in erecting a structure on such property.
But a property owner in the community dismissed the fears expressed by some residents, saying that some of them might have bought their lands from the wrong family.
He said: “In Ife, virtually everywhere around where they sell lands, there are people who would say some families have the right to sell or some are not entitled to sell.
“In my own case, I bought from one group, then the other group said they were not the ones that should be selling, and so on. But my case has been resolved positively.”
Ancestral land can’t be sold by impostors, says monarch
Reacting to the allegations of threats by hoodlums, the traditional ruler of the community, Oba Ogunwusi Fasina, who spoke with The Nation said the fears expressed by some residents were unfounded as there was no hoodlum anywhere in the community.
He assured that anyone who bought his or her land from the Ogunwusi family in the community had nothing to fear. “Can someone secretly sell the inheritance of another person and you expect the true owner to keep quiet?” the monarch queried.
He insisted that some of the people that bought land in the community, bought from wrong hands. (The Nation)
