The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has demolished the Lagos home of Felix Abugu former editor of The Guardian on Saturday and former deputy managing director of New Telegraph newspapers.
The demolition of the property valued at N70 million and located within the Runview/Mercy Estate in Isolo was carried out over the weekend.
Mr Abugu said he bought the plot of land 12 years ago from the Baale Adejumolu family. It is about five kilometres to the Murtala Mohammed International Airport (MMA), Ikeja, Lagos.
Speaking with fellow journalists in Lagos, he lamented that his family is now homeless and also debunked the rumour that it was a witch-hunt by Lagos State Government.
Abugu, now the managing director and editor-in-chief of AbeyaNews online, said: “Every single landlord in what was once known as Richfield Estate before it changed to Runview/Mercy Estate after ownership of the real Estate reverted to FAAN, bought their land from the Adejumolu family. I bought mine in September 2011. Some bought much earlier. But all of us bought from the Adejumolu family on the basis of a court judgment shown to each and every buyer by the family, indicating that the land belonged to the family.
“However, ownership of the land reverted to FAAN after another court ruling whereupon FAAN took over the Estate and renamed it Runview/Mercy Estate and invited landlords to come for ownership regularisation’. Even those of us from the side that has now been destroyed were invited but were later denied the privilege of regularizations for reasons that were never clear.
“Indeed, I believe that the reasons for this wicked demolition of our property that some bought 15-20 years back and subsequent displacement of our families and disruption of our lives, are as untenable as they are varied. The truth is that FAAN had no justifiable reasons to demolish our property. If it regularized houses even across the street, what was so offensive about our side of the street that they had to destroy our houses at a time like this and send our families out on the streets?”
