₦airaland Forum

Nairalanduser10:
Watch and share

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G2XW_VC8m4?si=6Qk_gtMC6l65kJtj

gratefulheart:
Owners of properties can do whatever they like with their properties.

Stop unnecessary attention seeking.

Ozommadu:
If you're one of those shop owners, I bet you won't say something like this...but you don't even have any property in your name.

It's always the poor thinking they have opinion regarding everything

gratefulheart:
Owners of properties can do whatever they like with their properties.

Stop unnecessary attention seeking.

Stone03:
You can't do anything against the truth but for the truth. That's why every efforts made to bring Igbo man down only expands him. Tell Sanwolu that his four years is toooooooo small to achieve his evil desires against the Igbos. Besides, he will helplessly be on his sick bed and an Igbo man will be pricing his ancestral home before his very eyes and he can't stop it.

lexylaw40kuti:
stop talking jargon omo Igbo.

You can go back to your village if you don't like what Yorubas ate doing to develop there own land.

You can go and sell your ideas to your governors in the southeast.
What nonsense

Mynd44:
The police isn't the problem, Nigerians are the problem.

The initial quit notices were served in 2019. The tenants went to court and the court case started. The court finally ruled that POWA had the right to evict and demolish.

POWA applied for a demolition permit, it was issued and the tenants were served a 3-Month notice ending December 31st.

Then they were also served a 24-hour notice on December 30 to remind them.


As at midnight of 12am January 1, those tenants should have left as they didn't have any legal stance or any right to be there, POWA had gone through the needed steps too and so they can't be held liable.


Also note that those asking where the tenants should go, POWA has not been collecting rent since 2019 when the initial quit notices were served. They refused to make plans now this has happened.

abc115:
Traders Count Losses As Police Demolish Computer Village POWA Complex

Traders at the Police Officers’ Wives Association Shopping Complex in the Computer Village, Ikeja area of Lagos counted their losses following the demolition of the complex on Sunday.

PUNCH Metro gathered that demolition took place in the early hours of Sunday with armed security operatives supervising the operation.

The Chairman, Computer Dealer Association, in Computer Village, Tayo Shittu, said the demolition began around 12 am.

Shittu said, “Around 12 am, I was called that about 300 policemen had stormed our plaza with up to three bulldozers that they were bringing down our plaza. The whole plaza, Phase 1 and 2, has been brought down. We are talking of about 300 shops, more than 1000 occupants. In some shops, we have two, three or five people.

“We are not feeling good at all. A lot of our members have travelled for the Christmas holidays. If at all it was supposed to happen, there must be a roundtable discussion. They just came suddenly and brought everything down.”

A shop owner, identified simply as Emeka, who also spoke with PUNCH Metro, said traders lost valuable goods to the demolition.

Emeka said, “Goods including air conditioning systems, inverters, solar panels, burglary, and laptops were taken away. They used hammers to break in and collected valuables before they started breaking. As we moved around here, we could not find some of the things we left. Two months ago, the Lagos State Government came here and collected taxes from all of us but the appreciation they could show us for electing them and paying our taxes is to come and demolish our businesses. Many people working under us are out of jobs. They are sending another set of Lagosians to the IDP camps.”

“We came here by 7:30 am and they were still here, surrounding the area from under the bridge.”

Another shop owner, Omobayo Azeez, said, “Around 12 am on Sunday, over 200 heavily armed police officers stormed the place. According to eyewitnesses, they blocked all entrances to the place and sent away anyone around.”

Traders at the complex in Computer Village had last week sought the intervention of the state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, and the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, following rumoured plans to demolish the POWA Plaza.

The traders, who deal in computer and information technology gadgets at the Phases I and II of the complex, lamented that about 1,000 occupants would lose their means of livelihood if the plaza was demolished.

They claimed that some officials of the Lagos State Government with armed policemen allegedly stormed the plaza on Thursday afternoon, to give them a 24-hour deadline to vacate the over 300 shops in the POWA complex.

When our correspondent visited the plaza on Friday, it was observed that the vacation order was boldly pasted at the main gate of the POWA complex.

The vacation order with the inscription ‘Lagos State Task Force, Governor’s Office’ indicated that the traders were expected to vacate the plaza within 24 hours.

The Lagos State Government in a statement on its official X handle, @followlasg, on Sunday evening, said the government “has nothing to do with the demolition at the Computer Village in Ikeja. The structure is owned by the Police Officers Wives Association, which ordered its demolition.”

The statement signed by the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Gbenga Omotoso, further read, “Those circulating the fake news that Lagos State Government is demolishing Computer Village are opportunistic ethnic chauvinists who will always relish in vacuous propaganda that can fuel their fiendish mission; they will always fail in dividing Lagosians.”

Gboyega Akosile, the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Sanwo-Olu, could not be reached for comments on Sunday as his line was busy and a text message sent to him was not responded to.

The spokesperson for the Lagos State Task Force, Raheem Gbadeyanka, when contacted, said he did not have the facts of the incident yet.

The Force Public Relations Officer, Muyiwa Adejobi, did not also take his calls nor respond to messages sent to him.

However, Adejobi had in a Saturday statement said there was no going back in the demolition of the building.

Adejobi said, “It has become imperative to properly establish that the complex, a property of the Nigeria Police Officers’ Wives Association, which is officially allocated to wives of police officers and their relatives, has been scheduled for demolition.

“This is to enable the Force to commence immediate construction of a modern shopping complex on the same land.”

naptu2:
Some of these things are just too ridiculous. I haven't commented on this issue because it's too ridiculous.


POWA is the Police Officers Wives Association. They do a lot to help police families. For example, they operate schools for children of police officers.

There was a bit of friction between the police and the Bola Tinubu Administration in the early 2000s. The Lagos State Government wanted to stop street trading, but police officers' wives were engaged in street trading outside their barracks. This led to clashes between Kai and the police.

In order to solve this problem, POWA decided to build POWA shopping complexes for police officers' wives. These complexes also served as a source of revenue for the association.

A funny article appeared on Sahara Reporters and Nairaland on December 29th. The headline of the article was:

Lagos Gives Traders At Computer Village POWA Complex 24 Hours To Vacate Property

But the body of the article said a different thing. These paragraphs are from the same article.

The traders claim that the demolition plan was proposed by Achieving Greatness Limited to the National President of POWA and the National Market Leader.

Occupants alleged that the wife of the Inspector-General of Police, Elizabeth Egbetokun, purportedly gave the directive for the demolition of the property.

It was learnt that the government gave the quit notice because the POWA Phase I and II had become dilapidated, defaced, and distressed.

https://www.nairaland.com/7952389/lagos-gives-traders-computer-village


POWA owns a shopping complex, POWA realises that the complex is distressed, POWA decides to demolish and rebuild it. What has this got to do with the Lagos State Government?

(The wife of the IGP is always the president of POWA).

What I wrote above was confirmed by the police a few days later.

A statement was published on the Nigerian Police Force's official Twitter page. It's title is:

PRESS RELEASE

PLANNED DEMOLITION OF POWA SHOPPING COMPLEX IKEJA: RECONSTRUCTION IN GOOD FAITH, COMPLIANCE WITH ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT TO AVOID HAZARDS.

You can read it here: https://twitter.com/PoliceNG/status/1741220733974421591?t=DDRONBC9lvSFpC3sEvJQLw&s=19




Despite the facts above, someone created a thread yesterday in which he claimed that the Lagos State Government was demolishing Computer Village. All kinds of people began claiming that the Lagos State Government had an ethnic agenda for demolishing Computer Village.

More surprising is the fact that a moderator moved that thread to the home page.

The moderators had to later modify the title of the thread when the truth became unavoidable.

The truth is that POWA was demolishing the POWA Shopping Complex in Computer Village.

Here's a link to the thread: https://www.nairaland.com/7954246/demolition-computer-village-powa-section


The Lagos State Government also issued a statement that made it clear that it had nothing to do with the demolition. Yet look at the crazy comments on the thread. How can anybody take people that make this kind of comments seriously??

https://www.nairaland.com/7954530/powa-behind-demolition-computer-village