Govt denies allocating coastal road lands to developers

The Lagos State government has debunked insinuations that it was allocating portions of the land earmarked for the Lekki/Epe Coastal Road in Eti-Osa Local Council to private developers.

The Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Gbenga Omotoso, in a statement, yesterday, said that the government allowed temporary structures on the land to prevent miscreants from occupying it.

He said: “There have been allegations that the government has been allocating the land to people for some other uses. I will like to put it on record that there has been no allocation of land there. What we have done is to license people to use this place temporarily. Nobody is permitted to build any permanent structure here; what you see here are temporary structures. Anytime we need to continue work on the coastal road, the work will continue again. Nobody has any permission to build something that is permanent here.

“There have been legitimate complaints and anxiety. But compared to the first place we visited, which had been taken over by miscreants (even though they had been sent packing before), this place is free from miscreants. The government will, however, not allow them to continue there.

“So, for us to be able to keep the security of this environment, we allowed people who can use this place as a temporary base. We have permitted certain people to build temporary structures here as long as they would use the space for good causes. We don’t want shanties to grow like mushrooms; we don’t want people whose character and nature we do not know to take over the land.

“So, it is not true that government is allocating the land to people permanently, what they are doing here is temporary and it’s going to be temporary until it is time to build the coastal road and everything there would be removed.”