Members of the Eyin-Osa United Kinkdom Development Association (EUKDA) in Lagos have protested against a proposed enumeration, alleging plans by the Lagos authorities to ‘exterminate’ them.

The community is also urging the government to pay adequate compensation for the landed property to be acquired. They disagreed with concept of valuing burial ground, huts and shrines including crops to determine the payment for the owners.

The association, comprising about 120 families is demanding a minimum of 45 per cent of the entire lands to be excised in the name of the association and Certificate of Occupancy be provided within the affected land area. Other demand includes that the excised land must be located inside Eyin-Osa, the ancestral homeland of their members.

In a letter addressed to the Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, signed by the association’s president, Chief Mufutau Shittu and Secretary, Chief Kabiru Shabi, they explained that the community has no intention of obstructing the Lagos Government developmental projects at Eyin-Osa in Epe, wants compensation to be agreed by both parties, before any enumeration on the land.

On the issue of ‘land overlapping,’ the group told the commissioner that on May 18, the State’s Surveyor-General informed us that the total land areas of Eyin-Osa was 3,342 hectares and that the total claimed survey plans submitted by the land owners was 11,361.70 hectares; that the land owners should find a way of resolving the difference.

“This claim by the Office of Surveyor-General posed a serious challenge to us as members of EKUDA, thus, we resolved to revisit every members land after which we came out with true position of members’ land.”

Speaking to the media, Chief Shittu traced the genesis of the issue, noting that between 1970-1973, Eyin-Osa lands were acquired for agricultural purposes by the state government.

“But to our dismay, the lands have not been used for any other agricultural purposes than what we were been doing there for ages indigenes. The allottees had no special project that can justify such allocation. In fact, most of them were not known, but rather, farmers by proxy, they alleged.

“To ensure that this act of fraud was perpetuated, government removed the “Right of Occupancy”, from land owners in 1993, through the revocation in the official gazette No. 20, volume 26 of May 13, 1993.

“The above acts, threw aside all benefits and the rights that belong to land owners till the new move gearing towards faulty enumeration process is being contemplated”, he said.

Shittu also decried the exclusion of Eyin-Osa United Kingdom Association from land excision, carried out in 316 communities across the state between 2011-2015, out of 15 applications submitted.

Eyin-Osa community appealed to Governor Akinwunmi Ambode to wade into the matter. They alleged that Epe Division has been short-changed in land excision in the state.