INJUSTICE! How Sanwo-Olu Took Over Taylor Family’s N8bn Land Without Paying Compensation
Lagos State Governor, Babajide Olushola Sanwo-olu has come under scathing criticism following his decision to take over a large expanse of land belonging to the E.J.A. Kehinde Taylor Family worth over N8 billion.
Worse still, the governor does not want to pay any compensation.
According to Segun Taylor, the Kehinde Family’s legal representative, the government is using its machinery to victimise the family by confiscating their land located at Abule Taylor along Lagos/Abeokuta Expressway, in Ijaiye-Ojokoro Local Council Development Area (LCDA) of the state, measuring approximately 80,880.00 square metres.
As of May 2021, the value of the property was N8,091,545,400. But when divided into land and improvements thereon, the land was worth N7,641,545,400 and the buildings N450,000,000, according to a valuation report prepared by Joe Akhigbe and Associates.
The land previously hosted factories owned and operated by the family’s tenants, including John Holt and Unilever, until the companies exhausted their tenanted periods. Then crisis started when some miscreants sponsored by a faction of the Oniyanru Family disrupted the peace on the property and evicted the family-employed private security agents from the place.
The problem became full blown, however, when the government turned its eyes to the land and decided to construct a public facility on it in the public interest.
FAMILY OWNERSHIP HISTORY
The Taylor Family had been in control and ownership of the land since 1912 when it was first registered with the Lagos Lands Registry. By succession, the ownership of the land was vested in Segun’s grandfather (Eusebius James Alex Taylor, popularly known as E.J.A. Taylor) vide a Deed of Conveyance dated September 27, 1943. This legal document was registered as No 105 at page 105 in volume 631 of the Register of Deeds domiciled at the state land registry.
In 1976, the ownership of the land devolved on E.J.A. Taylor’s five children, including Kehinde Taylor, via a mutual partition. Kehinde was Segun’s father. In exercise of their ownership rights, Kehinde’s children had been leasing the property out to interested corporate concerns over the years without any adverse claim.
It was learnt that the family leased a portion of the land to the colonial administration in Nigeria in 1938 for the construction of its Cocoa Regeneration Plant. In the 1970s, the family also leased the said property to John Holt, resulting in the building of factory warehouses on the land by the company.
It was also learnt that the family had never faltered in its financial obligation to the state in terms of tenement rates and other required charges. Not only that, the state had once formally commended them via a letter of commendation on the prompt payments of all statutory dues. Every correspondence of the government in respect of the land had always been directed to the family and nobody else.
All of this attested to the fact that there had never been any doubt on the ownership of the land by the Taylor Family, Segun revealed.
LAND RECOVERY BATTLE
After some sponsored miscreants invaded the land in 2016, the Lagos State Task Force on Land Grabbers was petitioned. Its intervention led to the lock-up of the fenced property. The problem was later tamed, and the family requested the authorities to restore them to the property. But this request, made several times by a broad range of family stakeholders, did not amount to any success. This transpired during the administration of former governor Akinwumi Ambode.
On December 20, 2018, the family filed a case before the Ikeja division of the Lagos State High Court in case number ID/773/LMW/18, challenging the continued lock-up of their property by the state. Nearly a year after, exactly on November 28, 2019, the government, represented in the case by the office of the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice and the Lagos State Government as defendants, conceded that the land rightly belonged to the family.
While the premises was locked by the task force and left insecure, the land grabbers were still having unchallenged access to it, thoroughly vandalising the buildings, particularly by removing and stealing the long-span aluminum roofing sheets of the multi-purpose industrial warehouses, and and looting some industrial equipment, resulting in its present deplorable state of ruins.
When a change of government occurred in 2019, the Ministry of Justice, led by Moyosore Onigbanjo, then attorney-general, told the family that its report had validated the family’s ownership of the land and that at would be handed over to them.
“In the conversations that preceded the terms of settlement, the government representatives acknowledged the vandalism that had taken place. But they said they were not going to compensate us for that and we did not bother. We just wanted to take back our property,” Segun said.
This then necessitated the filing of a terms of settlement, which was accordingly adopted as the judgement of the court. “The defendants hereby agree to deliver possession of the claimants’ warehouse industrial complex at Plots 412/420 Lagos/Abeokuta Expressway, Abule Egba, Lagos, covered by Deeds of Partition Nos: 7/7/1543 and 11/11/1543 dated the 18th day of February 1976 since the 28th day of September, 2016 to the claimants on Friday, 13th December, 2019,” the judgement read in part.
Segun informed that subsequent to the conclusion of the case, the government indicated interest in paying the family compensation in order to lawfully take over the land.
“At least three sources within the government circle have credibly told me that the Ambode government made an offer of N5 billion to be paid to us. But the people that were interfacing with us said it was N3 billion. Yet we said we were ready to accept that.”
Expectedly, the amicable resolution of the case provided some respite to the family and they were excited to take possession of their prized property. But this excitement was terminated by the state yet again. This time around, it seemed like a victimisation as the government appeared ready to expropriate the land without compensation.
Five months after the judgement, the government of Babajide Sanwo-Olu surprisingly served a notice of revocation of title of the family over the land “for overriding public interest.”
“We were joyful that our birthright had been restored to us after fighting hard for it,” Segun informed. “But to our shock, the government brought a revocation notice personally signed by Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu asking us to deliver up the premises.”
The notice read in part, “NOW THEREFORE, in the exercise of the powers conferred on me pursuant to section 28 of the Land Use Act, I, Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu, the Governor of Lagos State, hereby give notice to the holder(s) revoking the existing rights of occupancy in the said land with effect from the date of service of this notice for the reason given above.”
CCTV footage showing state agents taking over the property in 2022.
On October 21, 2022, dozens policemen attached to the task force and government officials evicted all the private security guards attached to the premises by the family. CCTV footage obtained by FIJ showed a mix of armed state security operatives and government personnel and a total of five patrol vehicles, one BRT bus and a car, on the day the asset was taken over.
A RETURN TO COURT AND ‘FOUL PLAY’
The dramatic turn of events forced the family to return to court to file a fundamental rights enforcement lawsuit against the government. Sued as respondents in the suit filed as ID/13980MFHR/2022 are the state government, the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice and the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA).
Four substantive reliefs were sought from the court in the case. They family were asking the court to invalidate their forceful eviction from the property and uphold their right to be duly compensated.
“A declaration that the applicants are entitled to prompt payment of adequate compensation, in line with the Valuation Report dated 8th May 2021, which describes the value of the property, when the applicants’ industrial warehouse complex was compulsorily acquired for overriding public purpose by the Respondents,” the second relief sought by the Segun’s family from the court read.
In the course of the new litigation, interesting episodes played out. The government lawyers raised not less than two objections at separate times against the propriety of the suit, asking the court to dismiss it because it was “an abuse of court process”. The government claimed that some other families, lying claim to the ownership of the land, had filed separate lawsuits against the state and it would amount to an abuse of the law for the court to continue with the Taylor family’s case. Justice O.A. Okunnuga rejected both preliminary objections on December 5, 2022 and February 2, 2023.
In a February 2, 2023 ruling against the objections, the court affirmed that the consent judgement was a subsisting court and to which the state and its institutions are bound. Referencing a paragraph in the judgement, the judge stated that, “From the above, it will appear that title to land was impliedly vested in the Claimants [the family], which led to the grant of possession in favour of the Claimants and this is still subsisting as the Consent Judgement has not been set aside by any Court.”
In March 2023, the Ministry of Justice wrote to the court that they wanted to consolidate the case with other matters. But the law disallowed a consolidation of fundamental rights cases with any other action or another fundamental rights action, according to Olalekan Ojo, the litigants’ lawyer.
“The ministry further wrote to the Chief Judge of Lagos for the matter to be withdrawn from the judge. Suddenly, the chief judge withdrew the case and has not re-assigned it to another judge. More than a year later, the case is still in limbo,” Ojo said. “This runs foul of the law because fundamental rights cases only have a lifespan of just six months.”
Olalekan Ojo, the lawyer representing the family, thinks the file transfer was part of the state’s grand method of frustrating the family and denying them justice.
“I believe that the Ministry of Justice had seen that their case was not going in their expected direction and that was why they engineered the withdrawal of the case file from the presiding judge,” Ojo said. “The case was already nearing the hearing stage before it was withdrawn from the judge. Since that time, the case has not been re-assigned to another judge.”
This sequence of events has left many questions unanswered in the minds of the family.
It was observed during a visit to the area on July 16 that LAMATA appears to be in active occupation of the asset. The entrance gate was closed, but its security guards were on the ground watching over premises while some buses were parked inside.
Attempts to get the government’s comment on this story were unsuccessful. Gbenga Omotosho, the commissioner for information, neither answered his call on Friday and Monday, nor responded to text messages sent as of press time. The same message, sent to him on WhatsApp, was not responded to.
.jpg)
