For over a decade, land grabbing has been the order of the day in Ikorodu, Lagos, and some border towns between Lagos and Ogun states. The struggle for land is now a matter of survival the fittest, and the winner takes it all.
Under the reign of terror in the affected areas, many people have been killed, injured, and many more have deserted their homes. The ugly development has forced residents of Ikorodu and border towns between Lagos and Ogun to cry out to the governors of the states, Babajide Sanwo-Olu and Dapo Abiodun, President Muhammadu Buhari and the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, to come to their rescue and a lasting end to the menace of land-grabbers and wanton killings, maiming and destruction of properties.
One of the residents, Mark Wale, who led a group of concerned residents that did not want their names published for fear of attacks by the land-grabbers, described as deadly, said: “We have been living in palpable fear for more than a decade in Ikorodu. Today, we might be happy, the next day, it could be sorrow, pain, and tears, as the land-grabbers fight dirty.
“Nine years ago, land grabbers unleashed mayhem on Ikorodu Community. Land-grabbers and murderers, who left traces of blood, raided at least 37 communities. In 2005, Igbo Oromo, a boundary community between Lagos and Ogun states, was raided and the invaders displaced the people, while in 2006 it was raided the second time. After the Mushin Ogijo community’s attack, Isiaka Tamori and Muhammed Yau, a hired labourer, were gruesomely murdered.
“The carnage in Igbodu community led to the death of 78-year-old Kokumo Hassan who was strangled, while 13-year-old Nike Ajayi was allegedly raped to death. A victim, Jubril Hassan, who escaped the terror gang, ran to the police to seek help, but the police arrested him and turned him from a complainant to a suspect until the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) rescued him.”
The communities have pointed the finger at Kamoru Lamina, popularly known as Sir K in Ikorodu and its environs, as the man behind the several attacks.
According to the affected communities, at the last count, Lamina and his gang had invaded 37 communities with more than 100 thugs on the ground in each of the villages.
Lamenting that the police seem helpless and incapacitated to bring the alleged kingpin and his gang to book, given the scale of violence that has been unleashed on the helpless communities, they have appealed to government to wade into the matter.
In the appeal, it was alleged that the gang launched themselves on the path of bloodletting and wanton destruction of life and property on December 3, 2005, following the invasion of Igbo Olomu, Ogun State, with the aim of dislodging residents from their community and ancestral land.
Not done, on March 18, 2006, the rampaging gang, allegedly under the guidance of Lamina, invaded to Mushin-Ogijo the second time, more vociferous than before.
In a commando raid, they stormed the sleepy community with 18 busloads of thugs and by the time dust settled, huge casualties had been recorded. lsiaka and Yau were gruesomely murdered.
The petitioners also alleged that the theatre of carnage and destruction moved to Igbodu community on October 4, 2007. They claimed that Lamina was the mastermind of the mayhem that led to the death of 78-year-old Kokumo Hassan. Reports said the old man was strangulated; 13-year-old Nike Ajayi was raped and she eventually died at the Ijede General Hospital.
Another victim was Pastor Samuel Olawale Hassan, whose car was vandalised and destroyed, while his office and house were burgled.
For his brother, Jubril, it was an escape into danger. To his chagrin and utter disbelief, the police to whom he ran to for help at Igbogbo Police Station turned the case against he and his brother.
They were charged with criminal intent, robbery and unlawful possession of firearms. Respite, however, came their way when the DPP of Lagos State advised that the facts did not suggest they committed the crime for which the police charged them, allegedly in connivance with Lamina.
On the strength of the advice of the DPP, the DC of Panti, Lagos, released the duo and the case was subsequently taken to Zone 2, Onikan, and, to the utter disbelieve of stakeholders, it was reported that Lamina, the prime suspect in the matter, was only made to sign an undertaking and he was let off the hook.
In their quest for justice, which has in more ways than one been tortuous for the victims, they had on November 27, 2008, in a petition by Falana & Falana Chambers, appealed to the then IGP for redress.
In the petition, Nurudeen Sanni, Lukmon Anipole, Adebola Kajubo, Ibrahim Orinsolu, Adewunmi, (aka Jaladugbo), Adewale (aka Etunrenren), Sani Adefemi (aka Scubby) and others at large were listed as those who accompanied Lamina to invade Mushin Ogijo.
Also, the community was able to get the AIG of Zone 2 to deploy detectives to investigate the alleged criminal activities of Lamina.
Investigation commenced on July 2008 and in his alleged desperate bid to scuttle the investigations, Lamina was said to have run to the heads of the family of the complainants, Pastor Olawale Samuel Hassan, Jubril Hassan and Mrs. Iyabo Kawojue, mother of Nike Ajayi, the girl that was raped, and asked for an amicable settlement.
After a lull in the action, on May 1, 2014, the gang was said to have unleashed mayhem on Pakisha community. The Pakisha invasion was carried out by thugs alleged to have been led by Mukaila (aka Actor), Jordan and Stainless, all acting under pseudonyms, who used assorted weapons to maim and kill.
During the attack, Adeolu Allen and Jamiu Sakat‘iyau met their untimely death when the thugs hacked them to death with machetes.
According to the community, David Alao is still missing, while the only witness was inflicted with severe injuries that have left him maimed for life.
The petitioners further alleged that since he could not stop the courts from preventing the police from bringing him to justice, Lamina plotted a jailbreak in May 2013, which led to the escape of remanded suspects from Sagamu Prison, Ogun State. They identified the escaped accomplices of Lamina as Segun Adebayo, Bukola Durosinmi and Wale Ikujini.
The jailbreak, which was also allegedly affected by Adigun Nice, one of the purported henchmen of the kingpin, prompted another petition to the then IGP on June 17, 2013.
Aside from the petition, they also noted that a court of competent jurisdiction, in suit FHC/AB/CS 16//2011 had also in a ruling delivered at the Federal High Court Abeokuta by His Lordship, Justice A.T. Lamina, declared that it would be a dangerous precedent to hold back or restrain the IGP and the anti-robbery squad, SCID, Abeokuta, from carrying out their lawful duty of arresting Lamina in the face of the overwhelming evidence against him.
Apparently, the affected communities are not the only ones who are fed up with the reign of the land-grabbers and their continuous brush with the law, as retired Assistant Inspector-General of Police Joseph lyamabo has severally lent his voice to the cry for justice. On the strength of his petition to the authorities, which was acted upon vide correspondence CB7000/lGP/SEC/Vol. 227/248, dated March 4, 2008, the retired AIG complained in clear words of the obvious unholy alliance between Lamina and the police.
In the petition, they said nothing could be more incriminating than Lamina’s admission of complicity in the attack on lgbodu.
The communities alleged that the police have been conniving with land-grabbers to truncate investigations, including a directive from the Police Service Commission, vide PSC/PUB/D/2972/l/10, dated February 30, 2011, sent to the IGP.
Another strident cry for justice from the law firm of Falana & Falana Chambers, which was one of the numerous correspondences to the police authorities to bring Lamina to justice, was contained in a letter dated August 25, 2009, which prompted the Presidency to give a stern directive to the IGP on the matter.
The IGP promptly complied by setting up a panel, headed by ACP Elumelu, to thoroughly investigate the numerous murders allegedly committed by land-grabbers and conclude on the matter, but since then the panel seems to have vanished.
In the same vein, the attack on Shimawa was credited to land-grabbers, when they allegedly sent thugs to invade the community. The land-grabbers seemingly threw caution to the winds as they sacked the community following disagreements with the Wonpori family over the family’s termination of an earlier contract with one of them.
Three people were confirmed dead in the course of the attack: Akeem Odegbaro, Fatai Adeleye, and Adebisi Adelakun.
Some of the hoodlums deployed to cause mayhem and their leader, Sotonwa (aka SP), were arrested but nothing much has been achieved, even when a witness (names withheld) was able to prove, beyond reasonable doubts in the course of police investigation, how Akeem was butchered.
The complicity of the police was evident in the witness account deposed in respect of the invasion of Igbo Olomu. The witness gave a graphic description of how policemen wearing vests of the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Panti, Yaba, Lagos, rode into Igbo Olomu with the invading thugs to unleash terror on the community.
He was victimised and brutalised almost to the point of death for telling the truth. In a sworn affidavit deposed to at the High Court of Lagos State, Ikeja, on June 2, 2009, the witness, Adejumo, affirmed that he saw the mastermind in a heated argument with lsiaka Tomori, shortly before the former brought out a gun and shot the latter at close range.
Moreover, police sources said, based on the strength of accusations against Lamina, they were forced to arrest and detain him at Zone 2.
But Lamina has denied all the allegations.
He said: “I am not a land-grabber but a property developer, a car dealer, and hotelier. I am not into land grabbing. People meet me always to help them to develop their lands. The problem is that people are jealous of my progress. They want to kill me and take over all the properties.
“Every year, my enemies cook up one story or the other to rope me in. There was no allegation they did not level against me. They said that I killed, maimed and even raped a 13-year-old girl. They said that I am a jailbreaker.
“There is nothing they have not done to frustrate me out of business, but I always come out clean. In 2010, my mother was kidnapped in my town in Ogun State. They demanded ransom and I paid N15 million to secure her release. When some cult groups killed and maimed themselves during a festival in Ogun State, they accused me of being responsible and I spent three years doing the case. In 2013, I was doing my child’s naming when operatives from the State Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) came to pick me that I killed someone. They charged me an offence I did not commit, yet I came out clean.
“They have come again this year. They are using a retired Commissioner of Police to fight me. They knew that I did not commit any crime. All they are doing is to force me to leave my business for them but my saving grace is that there is law. Each time they falsely drag me to the police or the court, the police hierarchy would discover that my hands are clean, while the DPP would exonerate me.
“Come to my office, it is like a marketplace. People come to beg me to help them to develop their areas. I don’t grab land and I don’t use thugs. Let the police come and do a thorough investigation and see who is responsible for all the allegations. One of them has been charged to court for impersonating a lawyer. I have been in this business for over three decades and no one can frustrate me out of the business.”
In the face of the claims and counter-claims, the communities have expressed concerns that, if nothing urgent is done by government, Ikorodu and its environs would be deserted, as: “We are living in fear. That is why we are calling on President Buhari, the governors of Lagos and Ogun, and the IGP to wade into the war in our area. We live in constant fear. We suffer physical, mental and psychological problems.
“We fear for our children. Our lives are not safe. Life is short and uncomfortable in our area. People are living as if there are no laws in the country. Please, save us from the hands of land-grabbers before we are totally wiped out.”
However, a senior police officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity, as he was not authorized to speak to the press, said: “The police high command is aware of what is happening in Ikorodu, Lagos. The IGP has received petitions on the activities of land-grabbers. The petitions are saying the same thing. They border on terrorism, cultism, malicious prosecution, unlawful use of firearms and ammunition, theft, a threat to life and conducts likely to cause a breach of public peace.
“In a letter signed by the Principal Staff Officer to the IGP, ACP Idowu Owohunwa, he stated that: “In view of the foregoing, the IGP has directed that the two petitions be consolidated and conclusively investigated by the AIG of Zone 2, Lagos, who is to finish detailed report accordingly. This is in order to discourage abuse of police process by parties in a complaint.”
However, a Chief Magistrate’s Court in Shagamu, Ogun State, has remanded Lamina ( Sir K). He was arranged over allegations of terrorizing landowners in South – Western part of the country. He is facing a four-count charge of attempted murder, conspiracy to murder, murder, unlawful possession of firearms and armed robbery in suit number MSH 1289. He is presently in prison.
