FG urged to intervene in foreigner’s encroachment on Jaja Nwachukwu’s land

The family of Nigeria’s first Foreign Affairs Minister, who was also the First Republic Speaker and Minister of Aviation, Jaja Nwachukwu, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari and well-meaning Nigerians to prevail on a Lebanese national and his police accomplices to stop harassing them and vacate their landed property situated on Ozumba Mbadiwe, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Counsel to Nwachukwu’s family, Mr. Christian Akubondu, said the foreigner had no respect for the rule of law. He maintained that the foreigner has continually encroached on the land even in the face of a valid court ruling forbidding him from doing so. Akubondu observed that the land in dispute was acquired from the Federal Government by the late minister in 1962 but the said Lebanese capitalized on his relationship with the late military Head of State, General Sani Abacha, to lay claim to it, using his firms with some allegedly forged documents.

The matter got a head on August 20, when the Commissioner of Police, Lagos State Police Command, CP Imohimi Edgal, sent some policemen to the land to execute a court order granted on August 4, originating from Justice I.O. Harrison in suit No. ID/105/2008, restraining the foreigner and his privies from further encroaching on the said parcel of land. It was gathered that a call reportedly came from an officer of the IGP Monitoring Unit, Abuja purportedly calling on behalf of the IG; ordering the AIG Zone 2 command to send men to the land and arrest all the policemen earlier detailed by Edgal, including the court bailiffs.

Sources informed that it took the intervention of Mr. Femi Falana (SAN) to get the bailiffs out of detention while the policemen were still being detained.