Thugs allegedly assault 91-year-old woman over Ikoyi property

The legal tussle over the ownership of two blocks of flats located at 41 Kingsway Road (now Alfred Rewane Road) Ikoyi, degenerated at the weekend when one of the defendants in the suit attacked residents with thugs and demolished the property.

The attack, which was carried out around 4:00a.m. on Saturday left the 91-year-old grandmaother along with her daughter, a retired civil servant, Alhaja Halima Abubakar, thoroughly brutalised when thugs numbering about 30, invaded the property with cutlasses, sledge-hammers and guns.

Eyewitnesses said the aged woman, along with her daughters, were dragged out of the house and in the process sustained bruises all over their bodies. Narrating her ordeal, owner of the property, Halima Abubakar, said they were sleeping when they heard people trying to force the gate open with sledgehammer.

According to her, the invaders eventually succeeded in breaking the fence down and forcibly entered their rooms, dragging her grandmother out of bed. She said: “The hoodlums rough-handled my elderly mother before rummaging through my belongings and carted away £7,000, U.S. $5,000 and N5 million as well as my jewelries. One of the hoodlums grabbed and twisted by neck but only God protected me from his hands.”

Explaining how the issue stated, Abubakar said: “I am a retired civil servant. I retired as a principal accountant after 35 years of service. The property in dispute was allocated to me by the Federal Government. Problem started when I refused to sell my two flats to a property developer.

“I have been living here for more than 40 years along with other retired civil servants. While others sold their houses to the developer, I refused to sell mine but he insisted that he must buy them,” she said.

She added that the dispute over the property was already a subject of litigation before Justice Wasiu Animahun of the Lagos High Court. Justice Animahun had on April 26 after the Case Management Conference (CMC) ordered parties to maintain status quo and return the case file to the admin judge to be reassigned for trial.

In the suit filed by her lawyer, Carlos Mbaka against Web Towers Limited, Felix Ezeamama and the Registrar of Titles, Federal Land Registry, the claimant stated that sometimes in 1992, the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing by a letter dated June 10, 1992 with ref NoHMW / 41026 / SAII /06 /VOL1 /3837 allocated to her flats 1&2 of Block A, 41 Kingsway Road, Ikoyi.