Business Post Contributor
By Brown Justice
Following the listening ear granted to them by President Muhammadu Buhari over a land dispute with the Lagos State Government, a group known as Shangisha Landlord Association has expressed gratitude to the President for giving attention to their petition.
In a statement released to newsmen in Lagos on Friday by the Chairman of the association, Mr Adebayo Adeyiga, the group said it was happy that the matter will finally be laid to rest now that Mr Buhari is a civilian President of the country.
Explaining how the Lagos land dispute started, Mr Adeyiga said, “What happened in 1984 was that, the land officials of Lagos State Government cajoled the then military governor of the state to demolish our properties with the hope that the land will be used for public purposes but we later found out that this was not the case and we further discovered that the land was shared by the land officials, wealthy and influential people in the society.”
“That was when we the members of the association challenged them and entered into negotiations with them.
“But when the negotiation failed, we instituted a civil action against the state government and the officials involved in 1988. This matter went through the high court, the appeal court and the supreme court all in our favour but since the apex court delivered its judgement, the process of harvesting the fruit of our judgement has been a herculean task because the judgement debtors felt that they are greater than the Nigerian law,” he added.
The group also thanked the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Abubakar Malami who they described as a true custodian of the Nigerian law, for his support.
It equally thanked all those who stood by them for the past 37 years while they were going to the various courts in the land.
However, the association promised that it will not fail to inform Nigerians if the Lagos State Government still remained adamant despite President Buhari’s intervention.
