What manner of cheating is this? Aregbesola demolished houses and shops from Ayetoro down to Fakunle. He kept on promising us compensation until he left without fulfilling his promise. The Ayetoro landlords, MDS to Fakunle shop owners met Oyetola like four months to his first term tenure at Governor Office, Abeere.
He promised to pay us the compensation after the House of Assembly election, that we should support his government. We believed him and piped low, waiting for him to keep to his promise. Please note, our files are in two parts, one for Ayetoro to old Garage, one for MDS to Fakunle.
To our surprise, we heard that government has called for the file of Ayetoro and left our own ( MDS to Fakunle) behind just because Ayetoro keeps on protesting against the government and they are majorly men.
We the shop owners of MDS to Fakunle are majorly dominated by women, and we never protested for once (until last week when we realised they wanted to sideline us), may be this is the reason they want to cheat us by attending to only the men/landlords at Ayetoro.
To set the records straight, if at all government want to pay any compensation, MDS and Fakunle should be given first priority. Why because, let us take a walk to Ayetoro and Ajegunle, all those houses they want to collect compensation for are still existing structures.
The government just cut like one room in front of those buildings. It wasn’t that the buildings were demolished totally, so what calls for giving them compensation in the first place talkless of giving them priority over us that our shops were totally removed and cutting off our source of income?
Some of us are totally out of business because of this demolition and what we are relying on is the compensation to start a new life so we won’t die of hunger.
We are women of honour and we have been respecting the governor for all his laudable projects and keeping to his words on civil servants’ prompt payment of salary which as well boosted our sales.
Dear sir, we the market women have our own contribution to the economic growth of this state, we believe it is not proper to use our gender against us.
We know how to protest like others, but our gender believes in dialogue. And we believe we don’t have to constitute ourselves to nuisance to collect our right from your government as we believe in you as an honest man with fear of GOD
Ayetoro landlords are still collecting rents from all their buildings till date because they are not totally demolished while MDS to Fakunle shops that were totally demolished don’t have means of livelihood anymore.
Please, kindly reason with us and see to our plight by not sidelining us in this payment of compensation. Do justice and fairness to it. We have stated the conditions of both segments of demolished buildings, without mincing words, the government should know who deserves this compensation more. Please call for MDS /Fakunle files and pay the money together in justice and fairness. “Awa lo kan” to collect compensation.
- Awokunle writes from Osogbo, the Osun State capital.
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