…says no hiding place for land thieves
By Eguasa Godspower
The Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, has assured his administration’s commitment to the speedy development of the Obazagbon New Town Project located at Irhirhi-Obazagbon-Ogheghe axis of the State.
Obaseki gave the assurance during an inspection visit to the project site at Obazagbon, accompanied by the Commissioner for Physical Planning, Housing, Urban and Regional Development, Ms. Isoken Omo.
According to the Governor, the State is keen on delivering the infrastructure needed for the actualization of the project within the shortest period of time leveraging on the current dry season.
He said: “I think for us, the starting point is to just establish the plan and then begin to build the infrastructure; the roads, the water supply systems, the electricity and fiber optics connectivity and all of the things that inhabitants here will require to live here.
“The reason we are moving with speed is because of the very long rainy seasons we have. We want to take full advantage of the dry season to begin to construct the infrastructure.
“Most of the land grabbers have been declared wanted and I think a few are currently being charged. Once we get details of where they are, those who have been declared wanted, we would go after them.
“Even if they are abroad, we would seek their repatriation back home and try them for stealing because they certainly have stolen other people’s land. We won’t call this land grabbing; this is pure theft and they will go to jail for it.”
He added that finance will not be a major challenge as the State will leverage proceeds from land sales as so many persons have expressed interest in securing land at the project site for development purposes, coupled with the Internally Generated Revenue of the State.
The Commissioner for Physical Planning, Housing, Urban and Regional Development, Isoken Omo, during her remarks on the status of the project, noted that the enumeration process for the affected lands has been concluded while the State government is currently ascertaining the nature of houses owned by the victims before the commencement of the compensation process.
Omo, while expressing government’s readiness to commence the sales of land to interested persons by January, said that restitution was a major issue currently being faced on the project as most of the affected persons except for a few, are without Certificates of Occupancy (C-of-O).
The Commissioner said: “For compensation, as you are aware, we have done an enumeration of everybody we met on ground when we came to take possession and those enumerations have been completed. Now, the next stage is to look at the type of houses, so we have also established that.
“After that, we will now deal with the issues of compensation. But I must also tell you that there are issues regarding restitution, more than compensation because the people with C-of-O here are very few.
“So that is what we are doing and once we finish that, we would be contacting them. We have also held a stakeholders’ meeting to invite all of them and explain what is going to happen, how it affects them and what benefit they stand to gain”.
She continued: “As you can see today, we have already started marking out the roads and we are doing the major connector roads because once those roads are open, it will be easier for us to parcellate and people can see exactly what the plots are, what land uses they are and all others.
“Using this season, we want to move very fast with the infrastructure so that by January we would be able to start giving people what is available for sale”.
