Professionals under the aegis of Lawyers for Reform Group (LRG) and Centre for Human and Socio-economic Rights (CHSR), yesterday, called on the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, to curb the operations and criminalities perpetrated through activities of land grabbers in Lagos and Nigeria.
The Project Director of the group, Oladotun Hassan, made the call while speaking with journalists in Lagos. He said President Bola Tinubu needs to initiate reforms particularly the review of the Land Use Act, which has created confusions in management of land, adding that the law can no longer function under democracy.
Hassan explained that it is expedient for the Inspector General of Police to also look into land related offences as the same as terrorism, because land grabbers harass and place their victims under intense fear as well as destroy ruthlessly.
The group stressed the need for the establishment of Special Anti-Land Grabbing and Fraud Task Force Unit in the Nigeria Police Force, whose operatives must undergo forensic investigation training to detect fake title documents.
Hassan said the unit must also follow strict legal guidelines, and collaborate with the Nigerian Bar Association in ensuring this sensitive department functions well.
He said: “We call for the urgent attention of President Bola Tinubu to abolish the Land Use Act 1978 and promulgate a new law to register, regulate the administration of land matters under the establishment of the National Land Licensing and Allocation Authority to end the ongoing notorious land racketeering menace, where civil servants acts in connivance in issuing a fictitious and fake doctored documents as real and by that dispossessed land owners.
“By that, several times, the ancestral communities with age long history had suffered from this recurring dangers most often in Lagos State.”
We use this opportunity to alert the Governor of Lagos State, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu to commence strict land audit regulations of all allotted lands and to deregister any land alloted with fake and forged premeditated land title documents and survey.
“In addition, we are equally aware of the several other cases involving notorious lands grabbers within Ikorodu, Ibeju-Lekki and Eti-Osa involving properties worth billions of naira destroyed without any compensations,” he said.
The President, Centre for Human and Socio-economic Rights (CHSR), Alex Omotehinse, expressed concerns over collaboration of government officials who register lands twice with two different names. He lamented that land-grabbing activities has spread across Lagos despite the anti-land grabbing agency.
He called on the Lagos state government to ensure that all land grabbers are made to face the law, as many lives and property have been lost due to the menace.
