Lawyer accuses Nigerian Army of land grabbing, demands N100m compensation [PHOTOS]

A Lagos-based human right lawyer, Inibehe Effiong has accused the Nigerian Army of land grabbing in Lagos.
Effiong claimed that the Nigerian Army through its registered company, Nigerian Army Post Exchange Limited, NAPEX, seized a landed property belonging to his client at Walter Carrington Crescent in Victoria Island, Lagos.

The activist lawyer alleged that the contentious property has been in possession of his client, Abayomi Akerele since 1975 until it was declared a federal inland waterway, following the enactment of the Inland Waterways Authority Act No 13, of 1997 which vested the exclusive control, management and direction of all land within 100 metres from the Federal Waterways in the National Inland Waterways Authority.
Effiong’s allegations were contained in a petition he filed before the National Human Rights Commission, NHRC, and the Attorney General of the Federation, AGF, over the refusal of NAPEX to obey a subsisting court judgment which was obtained by DAILY POST.
In separate petitions to the National Human Rights Commission and the Attorney General of the Federation, Mr. Effiong accused the Nigerian Army of forcefully evicting his client, taking over and destroying his property and arbitrarily disobeying the orders of the Federal High Court.

Effiong explained that the National Inland Waterways Authority had regularised his client’s continued possession of the land by giving his client necessary license, adding that his client was paying rents to the Authority without any controversy.
The lawyer, however, disclosed that problem started when NAPEX became his client’s neighbour.
He stated that NAPEX forcefully trespassed on his client’s property, demanded and compelled Akerele to also pay illegal rents, taxes and charges to them despite the fact that they, NAPEX, like his, “client, is equally a licensee of the National Inland Waterways Authority.”