First
Lady Patience Jonathan yesterday lost a long-running land dispute with
Hajiya Turai Yar’Adua when an Abuja High Court nullified the revocation
of the plot which is at the heart of the tussle.
The disputed land, a choice plot at
the Central Area District of Abuja, was allocated to Turai’s
non-governmental organisation in 2010 when she was the first lady, but
it was revoked by the FCT Administration in November 2011 and
re-allocated to Mrs Jonathan’s African First Ladies Peace Mission.
Turai went to court challenging the
revocation which was done by Federal Capital Territory Minister Bala
Mohammed, who gave ‘overriding public interest’ as the reason.
In the court judgement yesterday,
Justice Peter Affen said the revocation “was invalid, null and void,”
and affirmed that the land legally belongs to Turai’s Women and Youth
Empowerment Foundation (WAYEF).
He said Turai’s right of occupancy over the 1.84 hectares of land remained valid and subsisting.
“There is no regular and proper overriding public interest to warrant the purported revocation,” he said.
The judge said it was the dispute between Turai and Mrs Jonathan that led to the purported revocation.
“The plot belongs to WAYEF, a site for
the building of the head office of the plaintiff’s pet project and so
the dispute does not amount to overriding public interest,” he said.
Affen said that the claim by the
Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) that the plot had earlier been
allocated for the building of the African First Ladies Peace Mission was
wrong.
“There is no evidence in all of the
materials before me that the land had been initially granted. The
minister did not rely on the alleged error while revoking the land but
rather relied on evidence of overriding public interest,” he said.
“The disputed land, plot no. 1347
Cadastral Zone AOO, Central Business District, Abuja, FCT, was initially
allocated to Women and Youth Empowerment Foundation (WAYEF) while Mrs
Yar’Adua was First Lady.
“The Minister of the FCT Bala Mohammed
revoked the allocation for what he described as ‘overriding public
interest.’ He then re-allocated the same land to Mrs Jonathan for the
building of African First Ladies Peace Mission Headquarters on the 2nd
of November, 2011.
“The action of the FCT administration
is not tenable in law as it was done contrary to the rules and law, and
therefore will not stand.”
Turai had told the court the plot was
being trespassed upon by Mrs Jonathan, and got a restraining court order
dated March 5, 2012. The wife of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua said
the land was allocated to WAYEF on February 19, 2010.
Before the judgement yesterday, the court had given the parties several chances to settle out of court but this failed.
Those joined as co-defendants in the
suit are the Minister of FCT, Federal Capital Administration, the Abuja
Geographic Information System (AGIS) and the AGF.
The court however refused to grant the
monetary reliefs of about N1.9 billion to Turai, saying there was no
need to grant the alternative reliefs since the main relief was
granted.
The Presidency yesterday reacted to
the court ruling, saying the First Lady never tried to take over the
disputed land from Turai.
A spokesman for Mrs Jonathan, Mr. Ayo
Osinlu, said in a statement the “matter had been taken out of context in
the public domain to create an impression that Patience tried to take
over the land previously allocated to Hajia Turai.
“The land, as clarified by former FCT
Minister Aliyu Moddibo Umar, in the Daily Trust edition of Thursday,
August 2, 2012, was originally allocated to the African First Ladies
Peace Mission during the tenure of Hajia Turai Yar’Adua, as president of
the mission in 2008.
“By some curious circumstances which
have been explained by the FCT Administration, the piece of land was
re-allocated to Hajia Turai Yar’Adua’s NGO (WAYEF), under another plot
number. It is this anomaly, considered an administrative error, which
the FCT had tried to rectify.”
Osinlu said the FCT took what it
considered a legitimate course of action to rectify the error, which
Turai challenged in court, “having turned down several efforts to get
her NGO another piece of land.”
He said the litigation was between the
FCT Administration and Turai’s WAYEF, and that Mrs Jonathan and the
African First Ladies Peace Mission were not joined in the suit.
Osinlu added that “the land in
question was first allocated to the African First Ladies Peace Mission,
according to records available to us, during the tenure of Hajia Turai
Yar’Adua as president of the mission. If in leaving office she had
decided to depart with the land, the FCT has taken appropriate logical
action to retrieve the said plot for the original allotee and purpose.”
Source: Daily Trust NG
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