Aggrieved Farmers in Afero, Itoikin Community, in Epe Local Government Area of Lagos State, have staged a peaceful protest, calling on President Bola Tinubu and the state Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, for immediate intervention over the forceful acquisition of their farmlands, duly allocated by the state government.
The Farmers, under the aegis of Afero Commercial Farmers Cooperative, on Tuesday, stormed the Lagos House and House of Assembly, Complexes, Alausa, Ikeja for Sanwo-Olu’s and lawmakers’ prompt intervention.
Afero Commercial Farmers Cooperatives was established in 2005 purposely for commercial farming
in crops and livestock to promote food security in Lagos State and Nigeria.
Chairman of the group, Prince Wale Oyekoya, who led the affected farmers and concerned residents in protest, however, in the meantime, requested from the state government, immediate adequate compensation, immediate relocation of labs with Certificate of Occupancy, CoO’s payment on Land.
Oyekoya said that the land was allocated to them by the administration of Mr.Babatunde Fashola in 2014 when they were displaced from the former land given to them at Afero in Ibeju Lekki by the state government for commercial farming because of the construction of Cargo Airport at the place.
He maintained that when they got to Itoikin their new allocation, the initial problem they were facing was the issue of Omo Onile, who he said do invade their farmland and destroyed their crops.
According to him, “We are twenty in number when we started. In 2014, Lagos state government sent letter to Bama Farms Limited that they are relocating my farm to pave way for Lekki International Airport and I immediately called all other farmers to the situation and we all agreed to come together and engaged late Rotimi Williams, SAN.
“Eventually, we were compensated and relocated to Eluju Mowo/Mutaku in 2015.
“We started having problems from the omo onile and hooligans immediately we took over our farms. Thugs will come and disturb our farms destroying our crops and stealing our livestock.
“As time goes on the omo onile brought thugs and estate developers to destabilized us. The estate developers started building on our farmlands and we reported all this to the government through the governor, Ministry of Agriculture, Lands, Survey, commerce and Justice with no response or action from them.
“The omoonile grew wings by harassing and threatening us with hired police and military, frivolous charges by police locally and Abuja, lawsuits on a land that was allocated to us by Lagos state government.
“In fact, we have been through hell and hardship and Lagos State Government has turned deaf ear to our problems.
“When the problem of the omo onile and estate developers persisted, we approached the Ministry of Agriculture through the Agric Land Holding Authority when they brought bulldozer to bulldoze all our cash crops and farm crops they asked us to pay money before they could come to our rescue on the land that was allocated to us by the government and we have no choice but to pay almost one N1 million for them to come and pay for their agency signpost to be erected on the land that it’s government
allocated land.
“Each government signpost cost us N150,000, and the task force headed by one Mr. Balogun, led the team and erected the signpost and the omo onile and the developers removed all the signposts and erased all what they wrote on the wall the same day.
“That means our money went down the drain and we are powerless. This was reported to the governor, Attorney General offices, commissioner, and permanent secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and nothing was done up to this moment.
“This gave the omo onile and estate developer more power to harass, threaten and disturb our farm
businesses. Series of attacks was done on our farm activities unabated without the government intervention to help us on the land that were allocated to us.
“We believe there are some collaborations between the government agencies, ministries, the omo onile and the estate developers against the farmers.
“Recently, precisely five weeks ago, December 2023 the military came with full force beating people up
and sending people away from their properties as farmers were not exempted.
“Bama Farms is the hardest hit as his farms have been taken over by the military broken the fences, bulldozed our crops and properties, telling us to move our farm houses and livestock houses.
“Bama Farms is now their base and ammunition depot. All Bama farm workers have disappeared out of fear and intimidation thereby affecting our farming activities.
“The question is, why did Lagos State allocate military land to us.? Why did they refuse to attend to our cry?
“Why did they refuse to issue us C of O on the land allocated to us? Why did they refuse to engage the farmers when the military invaded our farms over a month ago?
“We are therefore, appealing to Mr President, Tinubu as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and true Democrat as well as Governor Sanwo-Olu, to come to our aid by calling the military to order or reallocate us to other lands to make our daily hard earned living.”
