Eviction: Ekiti Estate residents sue govt, demand N20m

Eviction: Ekiti Estate residents sue govt, demand N20m 20 Aug 2015 5:55 PM Residents and buyers of the Ekiti State-owned Irewolede Estate in Ado Ekiti have sued the State Government for unlawful eviction from their homes by Governor Ayodele Fayose. The government said they were owing millions of naira being payment for the houses sold to them on mortgage and other arrangements by the regimes of Engr. Segun Oni and Dr. Kayode Fayemi. The plaintiffs alleged that the governor refused to accept a mortgage agreement with the Ekiti State Housing Corporation in the payment for their houses, while all efforts to have an audience with him were futile. Following interventions by traditional rulers and prominent indigenes of the state, the government has granted an extension of three months within which to complete their payment. In a suit marked HAD/22/2015 which was filed by their counsel, Rafiu Balogun, at an Ado Ekiti High Court, the Irewolede Estate Landlords through their chairman, Ayo Orebe, and 17 others, sought an order for the payment of the sum of N20m as aggravated and exemplary damages for trespass, humiliation, assault and degrading treatment meted out to them by the defendants. The Defendants/Respondents in the suit are the Attorney General of Ekiti State, Ekiti State Housing Corporation, Ekiti State Commissioner of Police, and Ekiti State Commandant of Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps. They also sought a perpetual injunction restraining the defendants, either by themselves or by their agents, servants, workers, officers and men of the police and NSCDC from ejecting or further disturbing them as they had not committed any breach of purchase/mortgage agreement until the agreement is determined by the court. They also asked the court to declare the invasion of their homes jointly by the defendants and political thugs as breach of context and tortuous acts of assault and trespass. They equally prayed the court for a declaration that the purchase/mortgage agreement entered into with the Housing Corporation in respect of their houses located in the estate as contained in their respective letters of offer is subsisting and government and Housing Corporation are duty bound to honour same. In the Statement, Orebe averred that house owners were requested to pay the total costs of the houses within the period ranging from five to fifteen years from the day offer letters were written to them by the 2nd defendant. He submitted that house owners had not even exhausted the initial period of five years within which to pay up, let alone asking for an extension of another five years as provided for in the letters of offer. “I know that the state government started making good its threat when Governor Fayose ordered the invasion of the estate by armed policemen, civil Defence officers and political thugs on the 5th and 6th of August, 2015, who sealed some houses and harassed occupants. “The situation was so bad that my four-day-old baby and his mother, my wife were locked up inside my house and the keys were taken away.”