Owners of Winhomes estate in Okun Ajah area of Lagos have petitioned President Tinubu and members of the national Assembly to set up panels of inquiry into the construction of the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway and operations of the federal Ministry of Works in Lagos.
They are asking President Tinubu to address the demolition of their estate for the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway.
The landowners claim their properties were outside the project’s original path and are asking the federal government to go back to the gazetted alignment of 2006.
This is not the first time residents of Okun-Ajah community are protesting the deviation from the gazetted alignment of 2006 of the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway project.
On the 20th of May, Property owners and indigenes of Okun Ajah trooped out to protest alleged irregularities in the coastal highway project, they were hoping for some kind of response perhaps it will stop the federal government’s bulldozers from clearing their already marked homes for the 700km coastal road project.
Few days later, those fears were allayed at this stakeholders meeting by the minister of works, David Umahi, here he promised to go back to the original alignment which meant Okun Ajah would be spared from being one of the many businesses, homes and ancestral that would have been demolished for the federal government’s super highway.
But for some reason the minister seems to have reneged on his promise to the community which has now caused residents of Okun Ajah to once again petition the federal government to stick to the gazetted alignment of 2006.
It’s just three days since the owners of Winhomes property Estate first called for a realignment of the highway in a conference room but driven by that same fear felt by residents of Okun Ajah community, the owners have taken their demands to the street hoping their multi-billion dollar real estate project is spared the fate of other structures that stood in the way of the coastal highway.
It is uncertain if the minister of works will once again realign the project in favour of Okun Ajah community but with the federal government’s resolve to continue the construction of the coastal highway project, one thing is certain, the demolition saga between the federal ministry of works and the coastal communities is far from over.
