On Friday the 1st day of March 2024, purporting to act pursuant to the Land Use Act, Governor Makinde of Oyo State, the Omi Tuntun exponent, put a notice in the public domain that he was acquiring approximately 3,149 hectares along the Moniya-Ijaiye Road in the Akinyele Local Government Area of Oyo State for ‘overriding public interest’. The public notice then went on to spell out what the Governor considers as overriding public interest, to wit, the establishment of the Ilu Tuntun Business District.
Now, on the face of it, a governor in Nigeria has the power to acquire land for overriding public interest and to revoke whatever prior certificates of occupancy or titles there may be. This is a vestige from the dark days of military rule in Nigeria. The Land Use Decree is a poisoned chalice which the government of General Obasanjo left with Nigeria in 1979 and it has been an albatross around the neck of Nigeria ever since.
The idea of a Central Business District has come to stay with urban planning and planners worldwide. But, if the CBD in the UK, India, America, Japan, China and Australia all average approximately 300 hectares, what does the governor of Oyo State know that administrators in all these other countries do not know? Who are the town planners who told the governor that this white elephant project makes sense in a State where not a single fire hydrant works?
There are a number of problems with the ambitious governor’s proposed idea. This article will broach a few of those problems. The first is the utter thoughtlessness of trying to uproot over 200,000 people from their ancestral homesteads which also happens to be the physical location of some of the most storied events in Yoruba history. I refer to the Ibadan-Ijaye war which ended in 1867.
On the global timeline, in 1868, just a year apart from Kurunmi’s last stand, the Americans fought the battle of Gettysburg. Today, all of Gettysburg is historical monument complete with museums and other learning facilities geared toward ensuring that Americans of the future know about what happened in Gettysburg. Here in Nigeria, a governor is purporting to turn Ijaye, Alabata, Agbedo and Molarere among others into an ill-considered Business District. There is a reason why no Governor of Pennsylvania will even consider turning the sacred land at Gettysburg into a ‘business district’.
In his landmark book of anthropology, Europe and the People Without History, Professor Eric Wolf, then of Columbia University, touched upon a large theme of records and erasure. In that book, we see what makes the world consider that only Europe has history. We learn how some Africans have, over the centuries, erased African history for a mess of pottage. And we learn how some Europeans, seeing what some feckless Africans have done with African history, swooped in for the epistemic kill.
The second problem is that Oyo State cannot pay a fair price for 3,149 hectares of land displacing over 200,000 persons at this time. Assuming but not conceding that the parcel of land that the governor is eyeing is devoid of historical content, assuming that the people can be resettled on another 3,149 hectares of land with a mere executive order – the truth remains that Oyo State does not have money enough to pay a fair price for the hectares the governor wants. The fiscal situation in Oyo is so dire that the priority of government should be enhancing the capacity of citizens to pay taxes, not hamstringing the people.
Many Nigerian governors have taken to using the Draconian Land Use Act for ‘business’ ends. They make the land they take over into the haven of the bourgeois and pat themselves on the back for a job well done. The land which hitherto supported hundreds of farmers is with a whim converted into enclaves of plutocrats. There is just one problem: the short-changed masses will remember how privilege and power colluded to rob them of their ancestral cartography.
Nothing good can be built on a foundation of injustice. Offering citizens the highly devalued naira as an incentive, pressing bulldozers and earthmoving machinery into service, and mobilizing NURTW thugs to intimidate dissenting voices may seem easy to do but no one should live in the delusion that these measures will keep the masses mute for long.
The third problem is that the area which the governor is purporting to seize for commerce is home to at least 19 rare species of the oil palm tree, among other rare ecological resources in that vicinity. Has the governor indeed commissioned an environmental impact assessment as required by law before his purported appropriation? Is the governor aware that Environmental Impact Assessment is a condition precedent to informed development?
Taking the shortcut to any destination has become second nature to many Nigerians including Nigerian public officials and ‘constituted authorities’. They make anyone who insists on due process and proper measures into villains in the public eye. But we need to remind ourselves that there are no shortcuts to any place worth going. If a public figure attempts to do it, we should activate citizen suasion and the law. Let proper steps be taken and be seen to be taken. We should think things through before acting, not the other way.
The fourth ‘problem’ is that the governor has now unwittingly painted himself into a zugzwang regarding land already covered by the Nigerian Railway Corporation Act and by extension, the President of the Federation. It is no news that the governor who has expressed the most irritation at the recent reinforcement of Local Government Autonomy in Nigeria is our Governor Makinde. This overreaching regarding land firmly in federal keep smacks of tactlessness, to say the least. What is it with our governor/gamekeeper turned poacher?
Knowing that the governor is a product of a society that removed history from the public syllabus for decades helps to explain his decision on the ‘business district’ that he, perhaps, genuinely thinks is a priority. It is conceivable that the governor’s blind spot is even shared by his cabinet in the case of the Ilu Tuntun business proposition. But rheumy eyes should be shown the rheum so that health and beauty are restored. It is important to insist on proper measures and to resist half measures.
Hopefully, the governor will rescind this ill-advised move. If he does not, citizens should keep this matter in view for the next electoral season. We cannot afford to ignore the decisions of those who make us into a bunch of barbarians. We have history.
Tade Ipadeola is a poet laureate, lawyer, and culture advocate. He is the winner of the 2013 Nigeria Prize for Literature. He can be reached on tadeipadeola@gmail.com
