.27.3 hectares of land from RRIN sold to individuals, over 30 schools recovered
By Ozioruva Aliu
BENIN CITY – THE State Coordinator, Protection of Government Property in Edo State, Eugene Okoloise, on Thursday painted a sad picture of how individuals and communities have illegally taken over government lands for their personal and other uses saying not less than 150,000 buildings in Edo State were sitting on government land which were illegally converted.
Besides, he said a 27. Hectares of land retrieved from the Rubber Research Institute of Nigeria (RRIN) meant for a park by the immediate past administration was diverted and sold to individuals by an unnamed senior official of that administration.
Okoloise also said that over30 schools have been recovered from intruders and that the taskforce has received over 3,000 petitions in less than three months that it was set up.
The Coordinatorwho spoke to journalists in Benin City also lambasted some foreign companies especially Chinese firms who connive with corrupt individuals to deny the state of revenue in terms of land use charges and taxes that they ought to remit to the coffers of the state government
“Ours is to protect government property, overtime, a lot of government properties in Edo state have been taken over, 70 percent of the moats in Benin City have been taken over by individuals.
“The most attacked institutions in the state are the schools including tertiary institutions. We have recovered about 2000 plots from the Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma taken over by land grabbers. The UBTH outreach in Ekpoma, the houses there were destroyed and the land sold to individuals and they are building houses there.
“Over 150,000 houses in Edo State are on government land because most of these communities just deforest a place and start selling government land, we are going to recover all, If we say a new Edo is rising, we should rise with the new Edo.”
Okoloise said “We have been able to recover a lot of landed properties for schools. Some of them will destroy the school land and erect private buildings, like Ujoelen Secondary school where they built a brothel inside the school compound, the brothel has been seized and sealed. Iyeoba Secondary School, the community, divided the school land into two parts and started selling part of it to developers.
He said there was the case of a contractor who connived with the community to shift a beacon of a school to enable them sell the school land and that in Auchi, the land of a public school was sold to proprietor to build a private school inside a public secondary school and in another school, they sold the football pitch and built a personal house there “and they did not even bother to remove the goal post which is still standing behind the house.
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