THIRTEEN COMMUNITIES TO DRAG FEDERAL MEDICAL CENTRE ABEOKUTA TO COURT OVER ACQUISITION OF FARMLANDS

“We are typical villagers who have no other place than our inherited village shelters and farm lands. How do we survive without our shelter and farm lands? This is the reason why we hereby exploit this opportunity to appeal to you and your government to be compassionate towards us, by relocating us to a place that would no more be acquired by any future government” the Village Heads said.

“Most of our youths are unemployed graduates who have left with no option other than farming. These youths have never been lucky to have benefited from any of the agriculture programme floated by either Federal or State Governments. Their farm lands either purchased or inherited for growing perennial crops. They had already cleared hectares of land in preparation for farming season, which was also affected by sudden takeover by government for the said project”.

The duo of Chiefs Babatunde Olumide and Olaewe Sunday recalled that after the letter and series of visits, the State Government sent a delegation led by ‎one Omobo O.O and Olatunde who came on behalf of Federal Medical Center and the State Government made unfulfilled promises that the villagers would be attended to on or before the end of July.

“But some of us suspected that what these people were after was to get a hitch free fund raising ceremony that the FMC was about to do in July, but as we address you now, nothing has been done. Some of our people even thought that what government intended to do was to forcefully takeover these lands and eject us to nowhere without minding what happened to us”.

Penpushing reliably gathered that, the Heads of the affected villages therefore vowed to use all legal means to ensure that “We get compensated and resettled properly before any meaningful things could be done on that land”, adding that ‘already none of us were able to farm or perform any legitimate things on that land again, Our lands and houses have been taken over, how did government want us to survive”?