I’m sorry to have to break my hiatus on such a serious note but I’ve seen so much misinformation everywhere concerning the Landmark and the Federal Government saga and I wanted to break it down for y’all the best way I can because you guys are my besties and you can’t be moving without info when you have me😊
First of all, all the information here is gotten from the internet (mostly twitter, podcasts, newspapers, and news channels) and conversations that my parents and other family members have had with me and amongst themselves over the years that I have seen now are very related to this discuss.
Please note that I’m not an Oniru or their lawyer or the lawyer of Landmark Africa or in the Ministry of Works, (pliss ✋🏽😒🤚🏽)
Secondly, I will take this time to say “allegedly” (make nobody sue me abeg) so that I won’t have to be repeating it every two seconds. So…
“ALLEGEDLY”
To understand this whole thing you have to understand land ownership to some extent.
All lands in the country is own by the various state governments. The governor is the custodian of the land and holds it in trust for the citizens. Basically, everyone that owned land originally bought it from the government. Then there’s the customary land law (which I don’t know a lot about if I’m being honest) that runs concurrently with regular land law. Traditional rulers also have ownership of land in the country, however this is particularly prominent in the south west because of their historical background. in Nigeria, the law respects the customs and traditions of the various tribes as long as they pass the repugnancy tests
we won’t get into all that today
The land that Landmark is currently on was originally owned by the Onirus. The Onirus are a southwestern royal family that reside in present day Victoria Island. They had an agreement with the Federal government regarding the construction of a coastal highway on the coastal line. Mind you, the federal government actually owns the land on the coastal line, 250 metres from the shore, so they could’ve just gone ahead with their plans anyway. In my opinion, I feel like this was just a courtesy agreement (and also to avoid unnecessary litigation).
but, like I said before, I don’t know much about the intersection of customary land law and land law so I can’t give a particular reason as to why this agreement was handled the way it was.
The Federal Government appeared to begin preparations for this project soon after. A lot of Lagosians were probably unknowingly well aware of these preparations when they were happening. The sand filling of Ibeju Lekki, the extension and eventual closing of Bar Beach, the construction of Eko Atlantic, etc. This extension of Bar Beach is what actually caused the flooding of Victoria Island in 1993. A lot of sand filling was done around these transfers and constructions.
They may not have been directly related but i feel like if these things hadn’t happened, they’d have a lot of preparatory work to do.
Years laters, the owners of Landmark came and bought the land from a property company which apparently had no rights to the land. Regardless, this property company informed them that this land is already encumbered and explained the nature of the encumberment. When a land is encumbered, it means that a third party has interests on that land. For example Adam owns a land and Eve wants to start a railway. Eve’s railway would have to run on Adam’s land to function so she spoke to Adam. Adam has agreed to allow Eve run her railway across his land. She hasn’t started that railway construction for like 10 years but small preparations has been made here and there. Cain then comes to buy the land from Adam to build a town hall and Adam says he can, however he has promised Eve that she’d be able run her railway on this land and she has already started preparing to do so. So she can come and take it whenever she’s ready. Cain says he’d buy it either way.
This concept of land law is called a right of way or an easement
The Onirus are Adam
The Federal Government is Eve
And the owners of Landmark are Cain
basically, Landmark bought that land with full knowledge of the Federal Government’s intentions.
They’d may try to deny this but there’s been proof over the years. When landmark first opened in the 1997, they started an event centre. Their event centre wasn’t always the mighty building it is now. It used to be a canopy like structure, like what KFA events and The Elevation Church has.
This was because of the encumbering of the land. However, years passed and they saw that the government hadn’t taken any new in the construction of the bridge and changed their structures to permanent structures. They went on to build a massive building for the event centre, the hotel, Hard Rock Cafe, and spaces that have been rented by restaurants. Numerous beach clubs have also been built in the area.
This somewhat understandable because Lagos State is known for a deep level of corruption with regards to infrastructural projects and incomplete projects. Regardless, the constructions were still a terrible business decision because of the nature of the land at the time they’d bought it.
Now Federal Government is ready for the construction of the 700 kilometre Lagos-Calabar highway and has come to take what’s theirs, but because of the millions of dollars that have been mal-invested in the property, Landmark is causing a ruckus.
In all this, no single property of Landmark Africa has been touched, and the Minister of Works has promised that they won’t be touched. The affected businesses are people who have occupancy on a sublet basis, for example Mami Chula, Moist, Breeze, Maxitivity, etc. some of which have actually been demolished already. Compensations summing up to 2,750,000,000 naira have been paid to the affected businesses. The Minister of Works has actually asked the owners of Landmark to present their documents to the press if they’re so confident in their title of ownership. They haven’t done so till date which, naturally, raises the questions.
Can you see why this is really not the government’s fault and should quite frankly not be our issue.
There are bigger issues, but I’d address it in the next newsletter. Stay tuned for part 2🤭😉
just imagine it’s a tiktok please
I would’ve told you guys what I’ve been up to but that’s for another post. Just know I’m 80% done with school and I’m SUPER excitedddd!!!!
I love, love and love it, probably because I am doing land law now and understand it.
I saw what you did with the encumbrance story.
Congratulations with 80%, the remaining 20% will round up smoothly and neatly.
I can’t wait to hear the issues.
Because while I completely understand the land law perspective.
How about environmental impact?
This is really beautiful Chibuzor
Thank you for educating us, because there really is a lot of wrong information flying about.
I’m glad to have you back ❤️