Robert Egbe and Chinyere Okoroafor
AN engineer, Abiodun Ariori, has faulted allegations by a former Second Vice-President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr Monday Ubani, that he acted illegally last Thursday while recovering landed property in Ikeja area of Lagos.
Ubani claimed in a Facebook post on December 31 that Ariori procured land grabbers and officials of Lagos State Government, who illegally invaded and forcibly occupied Monkey Village, around Opebi and demolished residents’ houses.
But, in a statement, Ariori denied being a land grabber, adding that the government officials merely enforced a Supreme Court judgment in favour of judgment-creditor, the Meadows family.
He said: “We’ve been in possession of the land (Opebi) for more than 20 years. About six months ago, we were trying to erect some structures on the land when we found out that some mechanics had taken over the place and we reported them to Zone II (Police Command) of which they were all arrested. That’s when we met lawyer Ubani, who came to facilitate their bail and ordered them back to our land that has Supreme Court verdict backing us. Since we’ve been trying to work on that land, he (lawyer Ubani) has been using police to frustrate our efforts.
“So, our lawyer wrote a petition to the Attorney General of the State to assist on the issue of which they obliged. Based on that, the Lagos State Government carried out further investigation about the matter. Before then, the people in the area wrote the government to eject the miscreants out of the land as a result of their criminalities. The State Government carried out the execution on the 31st of December, last year. I was surprised when lawyer Ubani started attacking me while calling me several names in the media.”
In his post, Ubani alleged that he had filed a suit against anyone claiming that they were enforcing a Supreme Court judgment by invading the land, but that no one had filed any response to the suit.