Some of them have lived there for over 40 years. They were expecting to own the houses they have lived in for so long only to wake up to an eviction notice asking them to leave in 21 days. Daily Trust reports on the agony of residents of the Malali Low-Cost Housing Estate in Kaduna.
Malam Abdulazeez Usman has lived at the Malali Low-cost Housing Estate for 40 years. When he moved in, he paid N5 per room as rent. He has had children there and these children have grown and become their own men and women.
Today, he is enraged because a piece of paper informed him and all the other residents that they have only days to leave their homes for decades.
Since the Kaduna State Government, through the state’s Property Development Company (KSDPC), pasted quit notices in the estate, its numerous residents, most of them civil servants who have lived most of their lives there and had hoped the houses would be their retirement homes have been distressed.
The first notice appeared in October giving them seven days to vacate their homes.
In March they were issued another notice giving them only three days.
Malam Usman was so emotional he could not at first speak. It took him a while to calm down enough to speak and he started by recalling the days they paid N5 per room as rent.
“Even then, not all tenants could afford the amount. We have been living here peacefully and paying the rents as at when due only to be told to vacate the rooms,” he said.
He could not hold his temper in check for long and said the state government’s decision to evict them without considering how long they have lived there was wrong especially since they had expressed intentions to acquire the houses after the government announced plans to sell them.
He lamented the government’s reluctance to consult them to find out if they were still interested in owning the houses.
“We are human beings, we deserve to be treated as such and at least courtesy demands that we should be given the opportunity to purchase the rooms we occupied all these years since we are interested,” he said.
But Malam Usman is not the only resident who gets emotional about the issue. When the residents gathered to discuss the eviction notice served on them, many of them shed a tear or two.
Majority of them have lived as tenants in the low-cost housing estate for most of their lives while working with the state civil service. The estate had become home, as much a part of their lives as they had become a part of its history. Some were young when they moved in. They married and raised their families here.
Musa is an elderly resident of the estate who has lived there for 43 years. He has nowhere else to move to.
Visibly angry, he told Daily Trust that it was unfair for the state government to chase them out like animals and issue a three-week notice to them. The anger soon translated to defiance.
“I think they will have to remove our corpses from our rooms because I will not go anywhere. After all, I don’t know where to go to after spending my whole life in the estate,” he said.
Madam Magret Dauda, a widow and mother of five who has lived in the estate for over 30 years with her late husband, said the eviction letter came as a shock to her. Having married and lived in the estate for 30 years, Mrs Dauda had hoped that she would one day legally own the property as the state government had assured them it would sell it to them.
“My five children live with me and all go to school. As we speak, feeding and taking care of them has been a challenge and there are other widows in the low-cost estate with similar challenges and now we have received an eviction notice,” she said.
“It’s really heartbreaking,” she said, adding that, “the day I saw the notice that we should leave, I developed high blood pressure because I have nowhere to go and I don’t know what will happen if the ultimatum given to us expires.”
As our correspondent observed young tenants who assembled to vent their anger at the government’s decision, some of them said their parents had lived and died in the estate and they have now formed a bond with their neighbours irrespective of religious and cultural difference.
The tenants told our correspondents that though the residential quarters were initially promised to the tenants at a fee, the state government had later auctioned them off to higher bidders.
Many residents said they purchased the intent form at the sum of N10, 000 in 2017 but later noticed that the price per room fixed by the government was high.
“What we want the government to do for us is to reduce the price because a million naira per room is too expensive for us. We are pleading with the government to lower the prices so we can afford and pay within a specific period. We are ready to buy as long as they reduce the price,” Margret, a widow and mother of five, said.
In early March, structures in the estate, including shops, have since come down with the help of bulldozers.
Charles Cletus, the Secretary of Malali Tenants Association, said 1,240 rooms would be affected in the demolition exercise adding that so far, 80 rooms have already been turned to rubble with most of the occupants forcefully evicted.
“We started the process of acquiring the houses in 2013 during the administration of then-Governor Ramalan Yero. They asked us to discuss with the Kaduna State Development Property Company (KSDPC), which we did and we agreed on a price of N381,000 per room in Malali estate phase ll.”
He however said with the coming of Governor Nasir El-Rufai, the tenants had approached the administration but were told that a room had been valued at N1million, adding that no one was consulted before the decision was reached.
“We felt they should have approached us directly because KSDP is our landlord, we pay rent to them. After complaining, we were told that whoever was interested in owning his property should pay N10, 000 for the intent form and we all paid,” he said.
The tenants further claimed they had been assured that as occupants of the rooms, the government would consider them first during the bidding process. They however claimed that on the day of the bidding at General Hassan Usman Katsina House, the tenants were told to go back home as their rooms were not included in the bidding. This they claimed was not true as they were later accosted by strangers with allocation paper saying their rooms have been allocated to them.
“If the government wants to remove us from the houses, they should be able to tell us they don’t want to sell the houses so that we know but not after selling forms to us to now reverse their decision. We have evidence of all payments made because we paid into a government account,” he said.
Daily Trust made several efforts to get an official reaction from the KSDPC but was unsuccessful as the agency declined to comment even after a visit to their office.
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