Igbo-Etche Land Grabbing: Property Owners Cry Out

Dozens of property owners at Igbo-Etche, a suburb of Port Harcourt, have cried out for help as armed men believed to be agents of powerful land grabbers have continued to destroy their properties and seizing their lands.
The gunmen recently moved bulldozers and other earthmoving equipment to the area where they pulled down houses and destroyed household equipment worth hundreds of millions of naira.
The perplexed landowners who, spoke to National Point, said they acquired the lands legitimately and registered them duly with the requisite authorities, and many of them had gone ahead to develop the properties before the land grabbers came around.
Abraham Ebini, one of the victims, who described the situation as devastating, said many of the victims have lost their lifesavings and everything they have acquired over the years to the land grabbers who did not spare anything in their way.
He said a number of the victims have died out of shock on beholding the destruction of their properties by the heartless agents of the land grabbers, explaining that the entire area is overwhelmed by armed thugs who have been claiming that they have a court order transferring the lands to them.
“In fact, they write the notices on the buildings by themselves, which is against the law,” he said, explaining that court orders are not executed by thugs because it is court officials that publicise and notify those affected by court judgments.
Ebini said the thugs claim to be working for some powerful citizens of the state, who are providing them cover to do what they have been doing and despite frequent reports to the police and government no one has come to their aid of the now forcefully displaced landowners.
Another victim of the land grabbing, Mrs. Charity Obilor, who said she had two plots of land at the Freedom Estate, Igbo-Etche, told National Point she was alerted one day that some strange elements were grading lands at the estate.
She said she got there and met someone erecting a fence on her land with a claim that the land had been re-allotted to the person that sent him. She added that the land grabbers were forcing the property owners to pay them huge amounts of money if they did not want to lose their lands. “Some people would pay and still lose their lands to them,” she said.
Mr Joseph Ora, a farmer who planned to use his land for farming, said he bought his land in 2014 and had secured it with a fence. But the land grabbers demolished his fence and threatened to sell off the land.
Another victim, Chetachi Okereke, a businessman, who also had a piece of land in Freedom Estate, lamented how the faceless land grabbers moved into his land and graded it and removed the landmarks.
He said the original landowners who they bought the land from have disowned the trespassers and had even gone to the media to state their position, while Igbo-Etche Community members had gone to Government House, Port Harcourt to protest the activities of the land grabbers. No government authority has spoken yet on the matter.
Okereke suspects that those perpetrating the acts are people from the host community, Igbo-Etche conniving with those from neighbouring communities of Atali and Eneka, to carry out the act. He said the attraction to the land could be because of the new Port Harcourt Ring Road that is passing through the area which will add value to property there.
Contacted, the Rivers State Police Public Relations Officer, Mrs. Grace Iringe-Koko, said she would verify the story and get back to National Point but was yet to get back at press time.