The Edo State Chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC), David Imuse has berated the Edo State Government over what it calls ‘forceful demolition of more than 80 buildings at the airport road axis in Benin City.’
Imuse, a retired Colonel while briefing newsmen at the party’s secretariat in Benin city, the state capital, said the demolition was a resumption of Godwin Obaseki’s policy “of demolishing public and private properties of innocent citizens, his perceived enemies and members of the opposition party in the State.
“As a party, we condemn in strong terms these illegal demolitions by the jittery and rudderless PDP-led administration in the state; we see this policy of regularly demolishing public and private properties by the Obaseki-led Edo state government as irrational, evil and undemocratic.
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“Yet before this land was forcefully acquired by the same government in 2017, it was the world renowned Ogba River Forest Reserve, which successive governments before Obaseki used for reforestation purposes.
“It was also a natural park, one with a lot of tourism prospects, which a responsible government would have considered developing.
“It is very ironic that the same government which destroyed the private estates within the Ogba River Forest Reserve by removing the buildings even when many of them were occupied by families with children and the elderly is the same that gave Certificates of Occupancy to many of the developers in the communities. The worst of all is that the government chose to carry out this very anti-people action while many cases on the matter were pending in the law courts.”
The opposition party in the state said it not opposed to urban renewal which Edo State government said prompted the demolition, but that the people’s rights and the rule of law should be respected.
He said it beats the imagination of descent minds that the said areas belongs to the government where there is no presence of infrastructure till date.
The government announced its decision to reclaim the land on September 29, 2022 by declaring a curfew before the demolition.
Meanwhile, Chris Nehikhare, the Edo Commissioner for Communication and Orientation, said that the area was acquired by the state government to develop a new city and that all the developers on the area were on illegal missions as the state government had since 2017 acquired the area which has been put in the gazette.
