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Wukari Community Drags Taraba, University To Court

By Charles Akpeji, Jalingo
01 August 2015   |   2:23 am
DISSATISFIED with the manner the Federal University of Wukari, Taraba state, was acquired, the people of the community have dragged both the institution and the state government to court. Others dragged to court in connection to the said land, include the Commissioner of Justice and the Attorney General of the state, the Bureau for Land…

tarabaDISSATISFIED with the manner the Federal University of Wukari, Taraba state, was acquired, the people of the community have dragged both the institution and the state government to court.

Others dragged to court in connection to the said land, include the Commissioner of Justice and the Attorney General of the state, the Bureau for Land and Survey, and the Permanent Secretary, Bureau for Land and Survey.

The land, which measured about 200 hectares, was said to have been collected from the people of the community by the state government without any form of compensation.

Sad by this development, the landowners, through their counsel, Mr Shagnah Pwamaddi, dragged the aforementioned defendants to the High Court sitting in Wukari Local Government Council of the state.

The landowners, who are presently demanding for a compensation of N3 billion, accused the state government of forcefully acquiring the land from them without following due process.

In the writ of summons, which was made available to The Guardian by the plaintiffs, the landowners want the court to declare that the defendants “ have compulsorily acquired the said plaintiffs farmlands without following the due process and safeguards of acquisition under the Land Use Act and the Constitution.”

Seeking for an order of perpetual injunction restraining all the defendants and their agents from further “ trespassing” on the land, pending when the defendants deem it fit to reach out to the landowners, the plaintiffs urged the court to declare that the defendants have “ trespassed on the plaintiffs farmlands”.

Wukari is one of the volatile councils in the state. Some of the landowners who also bared their minds to The Guardian, want the Federal Government to as a matter of urgency come to their rescue as the land, which have been forcefully collected by the state government, is their only means of livelihood.

According to one of them “since they collected the land from us, we have not being finding things ease, because the land has been our source of survival.”

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