The Position of the People of Ilorin Emirate on the Land Policy of the Kwara State Government

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The Ilorin Emirate Descendants Progressive Union IEDPU, the umbrella socio-cultural organisation of all the People of Ilorin Emirate both at Home, and in Diaspora, has found it extremely necessary to unveil her total displeasure and opposition to the insensitive Land Policy of the Kwara State Government as encapsulated in the State Legal Notice No: 45/8 of September, 2009.

The repulsive policy, which regrettably urbanizes all the land across the state and particularly as it affected both the main city of Ilorin and her environs cutting across the Ilorin West, Ilorin South, Ilorin East, Asa and Mora L.G.A.s of the state is essentially insensitive, largely anachronistic and clearly unjustifiable.

A critical appraisal of the unedifying policy would reveal that it is not only disgustful in conception but also disdainfully and undemocratically contemptuous in application and implementation.

The policy is indeed a further step at pauperizing the overwhelming economically disadvantaged people of Ilorin as it has demonstrated its impeachable and unbridled tendencies to completely wipe-off the middle-class. There is no better way to appreciate this empirical position than the unavoidably exorbitant charges now required to acquire and maintain land for residential and economic purpose in Ilorin.

The Union is displeased that the inclement Land Policy has effectively castrated the third layer of Government (the Local Government System) as all the Local Councils have no say on land matters again. They have been so oppressed, suppressed and repressed that they have to go cap-in hand to acquire land even in their territories from the segregarious state Bureau of Lands for whatever developmental project they might want to execute.

An unbiased juxtaposition of the meager compensation offered original land-owners by the Kwara State Government with the amount she (KWSG) realizes in return from the sale of the same land clearly indicated that the present crop of political leadership in the state is out to generate and perpetuate debilitating poverty, unfettered inequality and infectious anger instead of sharing prosperity for the benefit of all.

The Ilorin Emirate Community strongly rejects the nebulous and shylock urban renewal policy of the Kwara State Government as demonstrated in the annexation and conversion of the premises of Schools and Public institutions in Ilorin to private usage.

The Union is disturbed that the premises of great Schools that once put Ilorin Emirate and indeed Kwara state in the Educational Map of Nigeria, even when most of today's policy makers are either unborn or too young to appreciate, have been ridiculously transformed from being the Haven of Culture and promising intellectualism to an oven of confusion, thuggery and discontiuance.

The undesirable metamorphosis was undoubtedly precipitated by the uniformed, selfish and arrogant balkanization of the School's premises for and who would not be satisfied until they displayed their uncommon wealth in the very heart of the city.

To worsen the matter, the feeble explanations and justifications propagated by some officials of the Kwara state government on the issue were regrettably watery, unconvincing and polemical. The justifications are unambiguous betrayal of the covert intention of the power that be to forcefully mortgage the future of our children. It is also aimed at simultaneously invalidating the labour of our visionary heroes past who innocuously made such large plots of land available for the general progress of mankind.

The union insists that the aggressive land grabbling or policy is an unjustifiable attempt to equate Ilorin with cities like Lagos, Abuja and Port-Harcourt in propensity to summate Internally-Generated Revenue through exorbitant charges, rates and taxation. Those who crooked the idea incredibly disregarded so many unhidden, variables that accounted for the economic discrepancy between those cities and our economically-entangled and strangulated Community.

We suggest that if the Kwara State Government is desirous of enhanced and unacrimonious IGR she ought to facilitate and attract large and medium-scale industries from which she could earn enough revenue instead of excessively taxing the ordinary people out of patience.

As the Union expresses her willingness to collaborate with the KWHA and other well-meaning Kwarans at impressing the State Government to positively review the contentious Land Policy, the Union wishes to make it abundantly clear that she is prepared to use every legitimate means at her disposal to ensure that the ill-fated policy secures a final abode in the morgue soonest.

This advert was publsihed in Leadership Newpaper of Tuesday, July 17, 2012