Agidingbi Land Tussle: Ashade family tells residents to ignore usurpers

Lanre Babalola

The Ashade Royal Family of Ogba, Lagos State has asked residents of Agidingbi land to go about their businesses and ignore the court ruling being paraded by the Akinole-Oshiun family as the owners of the land.

The family asserted that Agidingbi and other lands adjoining it belonged to the Ashade family as per the Supreme Court judgment delivered in 1985 over ownership of the land.

”We are the true owners of the land and nobody can claim ownership because the Supreme Court which is the highest court in the land ruled in a landmark judgment in 1985 that the Agidingbi and the vast land surrounding it belonged to the Ashade royal family. So, there is no dispute about it. Residents of Agidingbi should ignore the Akinole-Oshiun family and go about their businesses. We are in the process of filing court papers to challenge the so-called court ruling obtained by the family. We are going to seek interpretation of the ruling. There is no cause for alarm,” Prince Bisi Ashade, Secretary of the Ashade Royal Family, asserted Thursday at a press conference held at the royal palace in Ogba.

Prince Ashade expressed surprise that 25 years after the Supreme Court had delivered judgment over the ownership of the land, an unknown family suddenly woke up and started brandishing a court judgment claiming it had won a case over ownership of Agidingbi land. ”This is unacceptable and we will not allow anybody disrupt the peace of our land hence we are using this opportunity to warn the Akinole-Oshiun family to stay off Agidingbi land,” he added.

”The court decisions being paraded by the Akiole-Oshiun family were from litigations in respect of which the Ashade family was deliberately not made a party nor its attention drawn to them.”

The palace secretary said the family was already talking to the state government on the matter adding that everything would soon be resolved peacefully.

The Lagos State government has also initiated a legal action against the Supreme Court judgment that was believed to have ceded a vast portion of Agidingbi and its environs to the Akinole-Oshiun family “to ensure that the matter is finally put to rest.”

The government, in a statement issued the Ministry of Justice, expressed shock that the allottees on the “government-acquired land were, and are still being disturbed by the Akinole family, who never challenged the land acquisition by the state government.”

According to the statement, “On the creation of the Lagos State in 1967, the first global acquisition of land was done in 1969 by the government (Notice No. 236) of the same year, which was for 7,300 acres of land, including Agidingbi and environs.”

The statement argued that the Akinole family were not only aware of the 7,300 acres global land acquisition of the land by the Lagos State government in 1969, but were parties in the Originating Summons subsequently taken out by the Lagos State government in Suit No. LTILS/35/89 to determine the persons entitled to compensation in respect of the 356.442 hectares of land acquired, including the land in Agidingbi Village, under the compulsory public acquisition of 1969.