… My Security Guard, Wife, 3 Children Rendered Homeless —- Property Owner
In a desperate bid to revoke “undeveloped” portion of lands in the towns that falls within the Delta State Capital Territory Development Agency, some overzealous government agents, have demolished Poshville International School, Okpanam, Oshimili north local government area of the state.
Narrating her ordeal, the Proprietress of Poshville International School, Dr. Cheks Emmanuel, said she rose up with rude shock to see her property brought down within a twinkle of an eye by boys who claimed they were sent by the State governor, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, to demolished her property.
She said all plea to get their attention with her Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) fell on deaf ears including those among them seen to be gentle, as the bulldozer operator was hell bent on carrying out their directives to the later.
“Well the property there is worth more than 20 million naira because we have a lot of things we parked inside the kitchen. The security guard was not using the kitchen, I parked my clinical item inside the kitchen because I was running a clinic before now”, Dr. Emmanuel, revealed.
Hear her: “I was just here on Tuesday morning, around 9:45am, I was just hearing sound, the ground was shaking. I ran out, immediately as I was running out, they have already start breaking down the gate. I said, please, who are you? what is happening?
“The man that I approached first told me that, they are from his Excellency, that he asked them to demolish the building. I said, how? Why? This is our property it has original C of O from the ministry of Lands. So how come they are coming to demolish it? I said His Excellency cannot do this kind of a thing. If any property will be demolished, they will give notice and there’s nothing like that, I said please stop the action. Let us come to table so that we can present our documents, and they didn’t listen.
“I approach another man again that I saw to be gentle, who came with them and who happens to be Barrister Victor Ebonka and I told him, sir, can you please stop this action? can you tell them to stop?
“I don’t know why they are doing this, we have the document, it’s our land, the man said Mologe, said it is his own that he has the consent to the land and I said how? It’s not possible and they continued. They broke down the fence and the building that is inside the compound, because a baby sitter was inside the compound where my security and his wife with 3 children lives, they crushed everything down, including the school farm.
“We are using it as a field and around it we have farm, cassava, plantain and other things to show the children about agriculture. So they crushed everything down, after they did that I was like what is happening? One of my well wishers quickly called the attention of the Commissioner for Lands, Surveys and Urban Development, that look at what is happening to my Aunty’s property, so she quickly sent her SAs to come and ask me what happened.
“It was when they came that they gave me her number. So, the next day I went to the Ministry of Lands with my husband and of course, we presented our documents to her. Look at our C of O, we have this land for many years and I know the person that the land was assigned to. The year for the C of O is 2011.
“We acquired the land since 2016 meaning, we have been leaving here since 2010, so usually everywhere was bushy, we are leaving in the center of bush, right, side ways is bush, so any morning I come out, I see people going round I will come out and ask them who are you?
“So, that’s how I came and the man was taking survey and I ask and he said he is the owner of the land. I said okay, as he acquired the land from the Ministry of Lands, he immediately sold the land to someone else, one Mr Emmanuel.
“The Mr. Emmanuel, when he wanted to fence he told me that the man sold it to him, he now fenced it when he was about fencing it, he appeal to us to give him water, so we are the one that even supplied the water free for him to fence the plot of land”.
On how Poshville International School got the land, she said: “After fencing it, when development started coming, I called him, because of the pressure we had from the ministry of education that we should have a field, so I said sir, come and develop this your property that people are coming around and seeing it needs to be developed, he said he wants to sell it.
“So, we said okay, we don’t have money, what do we do? We have to go and sell our property in other places. We have property near Maryam Babangida Way, so we have to sell that one, and we were able to pay the man a bulk money of N10 million, because he said he is selling for N17 million. So, we paid the man N10 million and we appealed to him to allow us to pay the remaining one gradually and the man agreed.
“So, gradually, we paid off the remaining money and he gave us the C of O and the whole document of the land then, that was when he allowed us to brand it our school name, so we branded it our school name and went to the ministry of Education and called them that we have gotten a field for the school so we can proceed with our registration and approval.
“They now continue and gave us approval in 2017, so the school became approved in 2017. Since then, we have been operating. meanwhile, this road was not tarred, this road got tarred in 2018, the school was more like a community school, because is not accessible to people so we decided to rebrand the school because the school has gotten accessibility.
“When the road was constructed, we have to rebrand it in 2019, we changed the name from the former name Bright Future to Poshville International School. It became the name from 2019 and we went again and changed the wall and the branding to Poshville International School. Each partition, one after the other, we put Poshville International School. So, is a property that has been acquired.
“Nobody will say this is not developed, it is well plastered and painted and someone is leaving inside it and children do event there. In 2019 or there about Trend Fm came and did children’s day party and involved all the private schools, it was hosted there on that field.
“Besides, a school down there has come to do their free Inter-house Sports and we gave it to them free because we have good relationship with her. It is the field and we are not contesting it and it is government that required us to have a field for school to operate and I wouldn’t know why somebody will begin to say, it is not developed”.
She hinted that Barr. Kate Onianwa, has instructed them to rebuild the demolished property, saying “they have started putting the fence but they are just sluggish about it”, she said.
Meanwhile, the demolished property, used as a playground (field) as directed by the state government, houses the school’s security guard and his family of four with Clinical items kept inside the property valued at N20 million.
“All those things were crushed. The structure has been there. Is a field but we have our property in the kitchen the security is not using the kitchen, I kept my personal clinical items, machines I was using to run the clinic.
“My security has been put homeless since one week now. I have to accommodate him. Everything were crushed. They didn’t give us notice, we just saw tractor immediately. The thing didn’t happen up to 50 minutes. Within 30 minutes to 45 minutes, the property was demolished”, she added.
At press time, calls and text message sent the Commissioner for Lands, Surveys and Urban Development, Barr. Kate Onianwa, were ignored.
