* We did the right thing – Official
Several owners of houses watched helplessly with anguish while bulldozers tore through, bringing down their multi-million naira homes at the Phase Two axis of FESTAC Town, Lagos.
FESTAC Phase 2, also known as Abule-Ado Estate, is under Amuwo Odofin Local Government Area.
The demolition last Sunday, said to have been carried out by agents of the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), elicited wailing among the affected families and watchers.
According to the residents, the demolition happened a day following an innocuous article which announced that the FHA “would soon” begin mass demolition of buildings without approval in FESTAC Town.
Not a few affected landlords were in utter shock that the houses they laboured to build over several years could be destroyed by the government within a twinkling of an eye.
However, the FHA has described the affected house owners as trespassers.
The FHA Zonal Manager, Mr. Samuel Akintola Olagbemiro, said those affected were given more than 60 days notice, the first notice for 21 days, but they refused to move.
Olagbemiro said several of them were warned when their houses were at the foundation level, but they ignored the warning and continued building without any right to the land or approval.
Olagbemiro stressed that most of them claimed they bought the land from one estate developer, who also claimed that he bought the land from traditional rulers, in this day and age.
“They know the principle of buying land; some of them came here and we told them they don’t have any land, and that they should stop whatever they were doing, salvage whatever they could, but they continued building,” the officer said.
He confirmed that several houses were demolished, while some were left because people are still living insid.
He said: “We didn’t even go there after the end of the 21 days because we also wanted to be sure that we were doing the right thing. We wanted to make sure that we have done all the markings and they were informed, up to the extent that some that were even at foundation level still went ahead and continued, which is not right.
“We saw so many things, no approval, no original papers, nothing, nobody could give us a single, simple approval either from Lagos State government or from Federal.”