KANO (North-West, Nigeria) — A Kano businessman, Ibrahim Mukhtar Mohammed and the Kano State government have been entangled in a disagreement over demolition of the formers property without alleged prior notice, hence his resolve to take legal action against the government.
The businessman who disclosed this while addressing newsmen beside the demolished building along the densely populated Zoo road, said the structure was demolished without alleged prior notice from the Kano State Urban Planning and Development Authority, KNUPDA despite following due processes.
Mohammed, who doubles as Managing Director, IMUK Logistics Concept, Shankus Construction Company, further accused officials of KNUPDA of alleged extortion for taking money from him to design the construction drawing and supervising the work only to suddenly return to demolish the structure.
According to him, “This is once a beauty place we constructed, but as I look back you can see what happened as a result of the demolition exercise that was carried out by KNUPDA. We were not given any notice prior to this demolition. We just woke up one morning, that was the Monday morning and found these rubbles. My driving force for constructing this eatery is just to help our younger ones, our brothers, our children to get something, to get employment. I’m not here to make any money because of this thing. So we applied for construction of temporary, which was on the process. But unfortunately, without any notice, we finished this building. The only thing that remains is to put furniture inside and to start business and they come and demolish this.
“Unfortunately, this government, for the past six months or seven months, they will collect your money, but they will not give you approval. You can go and confirm from the KNUPDA, you will see heaps of files. So what we know we did was they sent their representatives. They were even the ones telling us what to do for instance to cut here, demolish here before the final structure. This drawing was produced from the architectural department of KNUPDA. And prior before this demolition, when they told me that they are going to demolish this place, I called the MD. And the MD said, okay, I should meet him on Monday, nine o’clock. Later he said, 11 o’clock. That was even after the demolition.
“That was when I know I’ve just been deceived because nothing has been done. And I went to him and I explained to him, this is the situation. He said I should come on Thursday.
“I went there on Thursday. Yesterday I came back from Abuja. I called him several times, no response. I sent him this message, no reply. And he’s like a brother to me. So I don’t have any choice. I want to tell the people and the whole world that this is what is happening. Well, this whole thing can be political motivated, it can be politically, it can be anything. I don’t know.
“The loss incurred is about N20 million loss. It’s not even the loss. It’s the psychological torture. Who will pay for that demolition, for that corpse, for that people who are crying, for those people who want to smile and their smile was cut. That is unquantifiable. No money, no amount of things will bring back that. That sadness we felt on that day, we never wish for anybody to have such kind of situation we encountered.
“So the next line of action is I have called my lawyers. I have shown them what we have, what we did. So the lawyers are studying it, and by God’s grace, we will take legal action for that,” the Business operator, Mohammad said.
In a swift reaction to the development, the Managing Director, KNUPDA, Arc. Ibrahim Yakubu Adamu said they never gave him approval to go ahead with the construction and besides the demolished building was clearly on an access road which was not his property.
Adamu also said the authority served him the first, second notices and the third which is abatement notice before the demolition exercise to serve as a deterrent to defaulters.
He said the authority is investigating and will sanction officials if found wanting in that regard.
The Managing Director, however hinted on plans by the authority to introduce a designated court by January next year to trial and jail land developers found defaulting.
#####