THERE was fear and consternation in Magodo Phase 2 estate in Lagos when dozens of police officers and enforcers of the Shangisha Landlord Association occupied the estate to execute a court judgment —the court judgement to reclaim land and property in a 37-year-long conflict. Bulldozers were on hand to pull down properties within the estate, such properties were marked with the inscription ‘ID/795/88 possession taken today 21/12/2021 by court order’. They were acting on a Supreme Court judgment that ordered the Lagos State government to give back 549 plots to the original owners of the area; the Shangisha Landlords Association. Magodo panicked and protested locking up the estate, and resisting the attempt to knock down houses.
A short version of the whole story goes like this: Between 1984 and 1986, the state government used privilege of authority to claim parcels of land already belonging to the Shangisha Landlords Association. The state government allegedly planned to use these lands for the construction of an “international standard hospital”. The hospital was never built and the plots of land were handed out to some judges in the Lagos judiciary, members of the former state executive council, and some “friends” of the government. The aggrieved Shangisha landlords would then approach the state government, fail to get their attention, then go to court to lay out their grievances.
In 1993, the governor of Lagos State, Michael Otedola, gave an executive order for the release of the plots of land to the rightful owners and the trial court gave a mandatory injunction order for the state to allocate 549 plots on the land in dispute to the Shangisha Landlord association. For decades, appeal courts ruled in favour of the landlords. The Supreme Court finally affirmed the judgment of the lower courts on February 10th, 2012.
For another decade, the justice department of the state government stalled and refused to obey the court order. This was what led the Shangisha Landlords Association to take action in December 2021. This messy incident has given us a closer look at the legacy of impunity by the military state government, sanctity or otherwise of rule of law in Nigeria, the intrusive nature of our federal structure, and the abuse of office at the highest level of government. The state government of the military era were the land grabbers themselves, and their successors acted as though they were prepped to look the other way in a case of gross abuse of power.
That the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, SAN, would use police officers to intimidate landlords and Governor Sanwo-Olu. Ironically, the Minister of Justice had to abuse the law for the express purpose of enforcing it. It is not clear why Malami brought those police officers to defy the Lagos State government but he has responded to Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN, and his Southwest colleagues that Lagos State government should have obeyed the Supreme Court ruling a long time ago.
A fine response from Abubakar Malami, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Our Justice Minister should be the last Nigerian willing to subvert law and order. If the Supreme Court passes a judgment and the state refuses to comply, the next action is certainly not the deployment of policemen from Abuja to Lagos to chase people out of their houses. Imagine the Attorney General of the federation setting the episodes of anarchy within a state of the federation in motion.
This whole fiasco has exposed the friction between Federal government and state government in the matter of security and implementation of judicial rulings, the same friction and incoherence that led to the Lekki shooting during the 2020 #EndSARS protests. Even the AGF isn’t so law-abiding and the state government has no qualms in maintaining injustices for three decades; in the end, the ways of our governments are not the ways of the law.
