Residents of Old Army Barracks, Suleja, Niger State on Friday in Abuja protested last week Friday’s killings by Mobile Police Officers and other security agents over their forceful eviction from the community asking for immediate intervention of the Acting President Yemi Osinbajo.
President of the Youth in the Community David Samuel in company of hundreds of other residents including wailing women told reporters at the premises of the Human Rights Radio Abuja that the death toll has risen to three following the death of a son of Mr David Obadiah and that 10 others injured remain in critical conditions in various private and government hospitals.
“The other two who died during the attack on us were buried according to Islamic rites and the other teenager that died of his injury has been deposited at the mortuary,” Samuel said.
He said the over 10000 residents woke up to an enforcement order by the local council for them to immediately evacuate the land they have been living on for 44 years.
He said the land was given to their fathers in 1973 by the late Emir Suleiman Barau after the civil war to young soldiers and their families.
He said the former council chairman Dikko Kassim was impeached over the dispute and that his deputy Abdullahi Shuaibu Maje, who replaced him led a team of enforcement officers and security personnel who arrive the area to enforce a quit notice order issued to occupants of the land.
The Director of Human Rights Radio and founder of the popular Brekete Radio programme Dr Ahmed Isa told newsmen that they waded into the matter in March this year and that they were told some developer had paid N54m for the land.
“We offered to pay N60m so that this people would not be ejected after these long years and in a place they buried their parents and some loved ones and where the umbilical cords of babies were also buried. We were rebuffed and you can see the evidence of brutality against innocent person by fellow Nigerians,” Isa said.
The Legal Counsel of the organisation Elias Offor said it was wrong to forcefully eject the residents without providing alternatives especially in the face of the Supreme Court rulings on similar matters relating to the number of years they have stayed.
