The people of Amechi and Obeagu communities, Awkunanaw, in Enugu woke up Monday morning only to be greeted with the demolition of their houses in a place they called their ancestral home.
The demolition was alleged to have been carried out by an estate developer, Private Estates International West Africa Limited (PEIWA) who they claimed had occupied their land illegally.
The large expanse of land, measuring 1097 hectares christened Centenary City or new Enugu city was acquired by the estate developers during the Sullivan Chime administration but the owners Amechi and Obeagu communities claimed that the developers in concert with then governments of Chime annexed their ancestral land without consent.
They said that upon improper documentation and without recourse to the owners of the land (Amechi/Obeagu) as observed in a document suspected to be a forged gazette, the current administration in the state revoked the certificate of occupancy from PEIWA.
Despite the revocation, the estate developers still hung on to the land while the traditional owners of the land continued building their homes in some sections of the land.
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But in the wee hours of Monday, bulldozers were drafted to a section the land to demolish buildings being erected by the people.
The people of the communities who came to the site later in the morning made a passionate appeal to Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi to give the revocation of the land a bite and value by formally handing over their ancestral land back to them.
“Absence of this is giving the Centenary Estate people the guts to hold on to the land and have the courage to demolish our houses erected on our ancestral home,” the community said through one of their leaders, Ozo Joseph Nnaji.
Nnaji told reporters at the site of the demolition: “This is our community land, our ancestral home where various families build their residential homes. Some have completed theirs, while others are still building.
“They came around 2 am this morning with men in police uniform, and deployed bulldozers to demolish the buildings, fences and destroyed everything belonging to the community.
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“The reason for demolishing our houses is that they will not want us to live here. They have been saying it, that we are poor. They said they don’t want poor neighborhood around here.
“They called us that they want us to negotiate with them. That they will pay us off. That we should relocate because they don’t want us here. That the way they want to develop the place, we cannot meet up with the standard. But we cannot leave our ancestral home for them.”
Nnaji maintained that the estate developers lacked any legal authority to demolish their buildings because their occupation of the land was revoked in November last year.
“There was a time they brought something like a gazette that purportedly gave them authority over the land. That gazette turned out to be untrue although the matter is still pending in court,” he said.
The Enugu state commissioner for lands could not be reached for comments but a senior official at the ministry who pleaded anonymity confirmed that the land “housing the Centenary Estate was revoked on November 27 last year.”
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