LAGOS—THE Baale of Oko Olomi in Ibeju-Lekki Local Government of Lagos State, Chief Lateef Eleku, has said some members of his community arrested and detained by men of the Lagos State Task Force on Land Grabbing are landowners in the community and not land grabbers.

Speaking in a chat, Eleku said the 22 persons were arrested on the orders of Tolls System Company Limited.

The arrested persons are Ismail Oshodi, Babatunde Sunday, Otunla Yusuff, Otunla Rasak, Oladele Musemilu, Pastor Eric Isiah, Olalekan Richard, Rasheed Ismail, Wasiu Tajudeen, Quadri Salami, Nureni Anisere, Tawaka Kufure, Kazeem Tajudeen, Ganiu Wasiu Surajudeen Rasak, Samsondeen Adeniyi, Ismaila Adeniyi, AbdulRasak Tajudeen, Kazeem Kareem, Ramzy Elo- Oghene, Akinkoye Selim and Saka Olamilekan.

Absolving those arrested: “We want to inform the public that all the 22 people whose names were listed in the report are not land grabbers but landowners and members of various landowning families in Oko Olomi village. If you look at their names, you will see that some of them have similar surnames, they are all families of landowners in the community.”

He alleged that in 2016, Toll System invaded the14 villages in Oko Olomi and claimed that their allocation was more than the 308.165 hectares which the government gave them.

His words: “The Lagos State government should help us; the Toll System is stealing from us. We want to go back to our village. As of Thursday, they have demolished 10 houses and destroyed three cars. My houses were demolished in 2016 when they came. They brought police to arrest 22 people in our community and they are all taken to court, but they are members of our extended families from those villages.”

Also speaking, the community lawyer, Mr Kunle Fakayejo, said: “I was briefed on this matter in 2021 and from our findings, we discovered that the area was invaded aggressively in 2016 by Toll System Development Company Limited, they engaged the services of land grabbers and invaded 14 villages under Oko Olomi. Over 1000 houses were demolished and they cleared everything as they were demolishing, the only thing they left were shrines and burial sites of the people. The land grabbers were eventually waded off after we did a petition to the Inspector-General of Police who assigned the case to Assistant IGP, in Alagbon Police station and police investigation proved that it was 308.165 hectares that the Lagos State government allocated to them but they suddenly claimed that it was 1561.20 hectares. Every documentation confirmed that Oko Olomi were the customary owners of Oko Olomi land before Toll system came to encroach it.”

Toll Systems react:

However, the Chief Legal Officer of Toll Systems, Mr Ugochukwu Ndubusi, said: “It is a blatant lie, the Lagos State Land Grabbing Task Force came to clear that place on Thursday if I don’t have the Certificate of Occupancy, is it possible for the Attorney General to do an intervention on my behalf if I do not have documents? I have the C of O, they do not have a Title, if they have a title, ask them for the title.”