The friction between the two parties was said to have begun earlier this month after some men who claiming to be acting on behalf of BUK stormed the area with a bulldozer and allegedly started pulling down fences and gates that were erected by owners of several plots of land.
An eyewitness and resident who declined to be named told our reporter that all pleas made by the plots owners to evacuate some of their construction materials from the site before the exercise took place, fell on the demolishers’ deaf ears as they only referred the victims to a man who claimed to be a lawyer representing the academic institution.
“The lawyer also did not listen to anybody; instead he kept insisting that he was acting on the directives of the university authorities”, the witness said.
One of the complainants, Bashir Ahmed who conducted the reporter round the site of the demolition called on the varsity to immediately restore their plots of land and to pay them compensation for destroying their structures, adding that the action was not guided by due process.
“Even if the plots belonged to the institution as it claimed, we have the right to be informed by the varsity management before taking such a misguided position”, he complained bitterly.
Aliyu Mustapha another aggrieved resident told our reporter by telephone that “We will not accept the injustice done to us by the authorities of BUK. They don’t have the legal authority to seize our lands and destroy our fences arbitrarily without even informing us”.
“These plots were allocated and sold to us by Ungoggo local government council and each one of us has papers for their property. Therefore, the action of the university has no place under the law. Only the Kano State government under the Kano State Urban Planning and Development Authority (KNUPDA) has the power to revoke allocations of our plots”, added Mustapha.
The residents further alleged that the demolition was selective because it targeted only those plots that were not developed by their owners while leaving all the completed houses that should also have been destroyed intact.
Also in a letter signed by one of the aggrieved persons, Alhaji Balarabe Adamu on behalf of his eleven others and addressed to the Sole Administrator of the local council on the demolition, the complainants claimed that: “the driver of the bulldozer and his co-workers informed some of us who met them on site that they would come back to fence the entire land upon the instruction of the university and they dropped a phone number of the legal adviser of the university who later introduced himself as A. Sadiq Esq”.
“It is on the above premise that we plead with you Sir to quickly intervene on this issue with a view to seeing to it that the plots of land which your council officially allocated to us was not taken by act of trespassers against our joint and collective interests”, the letter concluded.
However, the spokesman of the varsity Mustapha Zahraddeen who spoke to Weekly Trust on the issue denied the allegations, arguing that the complainants have not been sincere in their claims.
He said: “The plots in dispute were given to Ungoggo local government council as compensation by BUK between 1979 to 1980 when the institution felt that the land was too much for it to use at the time. The community members had since then been allowed to use the plots for farming purposes.
“But later some of the residents started erecting structures while others sold many portions of the land to other people illegally. This was why the university management set up committee mandated to separate plots of land belonging to the institution from those of other people.
“Still, after the demarcations were made, some of the residents continued to trespass into the varsity’s territories and claimed them as their own. Consequently, the BUK management deemed it necessary to take a decisive step in reclaiming its lawful parcels of land that have been illegally taken over by some members of the community”.
Responding to the allegations of selectivity leveled against the institution during the demolition exercise, Zahraddeen said that the accusation only exposed the “illogicality and dishonesty in the whole claims made against the university”, by the aggrieved residents.
