Leave us out of eviction order, 200-year-old community urges Oyo government

Residents of Aba Paanu in Oluyole Local Government Area of Oyo State on Friday made a passionate appeal to the state government to stop the plan to evict them from their ancestral land.
The plea followed a contravention notice issued to them by the State Physical Planning and Urban Development Board on March 14.
Rising from a crucial meeting at Aba Paanu, members of the community resolved to plead with the state government to leave out the community out of the several hectares of land acquired.
Speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria at Aba Paanu, the village head, Chief Ayoade Oyekan, said the village was the ancestral home of Oyekan descendants and dated back to about 200 years.
He said the eviction would deny them and their offsprings opportunity to lay claim to their origin.
Oyekan said: “Apart from this, it will cause great hardship to get another place to relocate to because of cost of buying land, while building houses elsewhere will be tough.
“Also, are we going to leave the graves of our ancestors here to be demolished?
“Such action means that our origin would cease to exist.”
Another indigene, Prof. Peter Oyekan, said the villagers had agreed to allow government take over the communal land since government was ready to pay compensation on the properties there.
He, however, said the villagers were not in support of government’s action in respect of evicting them from their ancestral home, adding that they were not sure of what the future holds.
Oyekan said: “They have lived their entire life in the village and have nowhere else to go, so government should reconsider its decision.”
He disclosed that a letter of appeal had been written to Governor Abiola Ajimobi through the State Commissioner for Lands, Housing, Urban and Regional Planning, Ajiboye Omodewu.
NAN learnt that the commissioner and some top management staff of the ministry had on April 10 held a meeting with the representatives of the village.
It was disclosed at the meeting that Oyo State Government had acquired about five kilometres of the stretch on both sides of the Ibadan-Lagos Expressway, some metres from Guru Maharaji Village, to the Ogun State border.
Government, it was learnt, had also agreed to pay compensation after the enumeration of properties on the acquired land.
Aba Paanu, some 10 minutes’ drive from Ibadan, was one of the communities affected by a 2005 eviction order said to have been issued during the administration of Chief Rashidi Ladoja.