Landowners under the auspices of the Trustees of the Association of Plot Owners, Maitama Extension, Maitama Aliero, Abuja have appealed to President Bola Tinubu to restrain the military from defying a court order barring them from trespassing on their land in Abuja.
The landowners made the appeal in Abuja through their spokesperson Dr Angela Ekure after the court adjourned the case to November 7, 2023.
On March 27, 2023, Justice U. P. Kekemeke of the FCT High Court, Abuja restrained the defendants – the president, Ministry of Defence, minister of defence, FCT minister, and minister of justice – from the land pending the determination of a subsisting case before it.
The judge adjourned the case to June 20, 2023.
On June 20, the court couldn’t hear the suit marked FCT/HC/CV/318/2022 and therefore adjourned to November 6, 2023, because of judges’ recess.
The landowners had approached the court on December 16, 2023, asking the court to order the defendants and their agents from “committing further acts of trespass, forcibly developing, acquiring, taking over, meddling in or with, transferring, disposing off, speculating in respect of the properties of the claimants/applicants lying, being, situate at and known as and within Cadastral Zone A05, Maitama a.k.a Maitama Aliero.”
Justice Kekemeke granted the restraining order after hearing the defendants’ affidavit in support of the motion paper attached with 13 exhibits, sworn by Dr Angela Ekure, and written arguments by the counsel to the applicants, Williams Ataguba.
Despite the subsisting court order, the defendants – particularly the military – has refused to comply by encroaching into the plots of land, destroying property worth hundreds of billions, they said.
Ekure said the landowners are in pain because the military are still encroaching on “our lands causing damages worth hundreds of millions.
“We are parents who invested our hard-earned savings on these lands. But unfortunately, the institutions who are supposed to uphold law and order are the same ones defying the court order in the most despicable way,” she said.
She said the landowners had “approached the court to preserve our hard earned plots of land. It is therefore despicable for some agencies of government to use their position to destroy the structure we built with our life-time savings, pensions, bank loans, among others.”
The landowners appealed to President Tinubu to restrain the military from further encroachment and respect the FCT High Court pending the determination of the case.
