The Sodeinde family members in an Ogun community have cried out over the illegal seizure of their land.
According to the Sodeinde family, a construction company, Laralek Ultimate Ltd has been accused of illegally occupying about five acres of the land belonging to the family since May 2022.
A member of the family, Sebil Sodeinde, told our correspondent.
In 2018, Laralek asked the family for permission to use their land for a couple of years. He said the land in question is along Siun-Kobape Road in the Obafemi Owode Local Government Area of the state.
Sodeinde said when the family finally requested to take over the land, Laralek refused to leave.
According to him; “Around 2018, Laralek dropped their construction materials on our land along the expressway. Laralek is a construction company building roads for the Ogun State Government. The company told us they wanted to use the site as a temporary place to keep all their maintenance equipment,” Sodeinde said.
“The management of the company only told us that they wanted to use the land for a while and we didn’t disturb them. We had a lawyer who confirmed this from them.
“So, they finished the road they built for three years and refused to pack [up]. They are now doing some things with a lot of gravel on the site and we had to reach out to them to find out what was going on. They told us the same thing again; that they wanted to use the land for some time. We told them that they had already completed the road construction they were working on.
“At some point, we noticed that the company was trying to turn our land into a permanent construction site. They had even built some offices on our land. We sold part of our land to one Siun Club and we needed to use our land too. So, we instructed our lawyer to inform Laralek they needed to leave.
“After our lawyer met the company, the company claimed that the state government had handed the land to them.
“On hearing this, we took the matter to the Public Complaints Commission (PCC). The PCC then invited us but Laralek’s lawyer failed to show up.
“After a while, we eventually had an audience with the PCC and Laralek’s lawyer was in attendance. The PCC asked Laralek’s lawyer to produce documents to prove that the state government had handed the land over to Laralek, but he couldn’t provide it.
Since then, Laralek has failed to show proof of ownership. Up till now, the construction company has also not responded to us or the PCC.”
Several contact establishment with Laralek but the network service provider said that the company’s phone number was nonexistent.
Efforts to contact Adebiyi Olalekan, Laralek’s managing director, via LinkedIn, were also unsuccessful.
Odunola Abayomi, Olalekan’s lawyer, also declined to speak on the matter after he was approached by our correspondent on Thursday. Abayomi also refused to facilitate an interview that could allow Olalekan react to the family’s allegation.
Additional document from The Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ)