Nigeria gets tough with marauding Sons of Soil

Group in search of land to seize

LAGOS, Aug 24, (RTRS): A year before his wedding, Jude Egharevba was overjoyed when he bought a plot of land to build a house for him and his fiancee on the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital.

But his joy was short-lived, after a group of young men stormed his land and demanded cash to leave peacefully.

The same men and other gangs visited his land several times and disrupted the building work, forcing Egharevba, an oil and gas executive, to pay them off with one million naira ($3,175) over the course of a year in order to finish the construction.

These men, known as the Omo Onile, which means “Sons of the Soil” in the local Yoruba language, roam Lagos looking for land owners and property developers to dupe and extort for money.

“They milk you at every stage, and beat up your workers if you don’t pay,” said Egharevba, 28, who had to postpone his wedding due to the constant setbacks to the construction of his house.

Swelled

The menace of the Omo Onile, whose numbers have swelled in recent years amid rising unemployment in Nigeria, is discouraging investors, hindering businesses and holding back development in Lagos state, government officials say.

Earlier this year, the governor of Lagos, Akinwunmi Ambode, vowed to crack down on those who extort landowners or take over their property, and set up a task force to tackle the problem.

The state’s assembly followed his lead, and on Aug. 15 the Lagos State Properties Protection Law was enacted.

The law punishes land theft and a range of related offences with fines and a jail term of between five and 21 years.

“These hoodlums were becoming embarrassing, and were frustrating companies,” Akinjide Bakare, chairman of the Omo Onile task force, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

“Lagos was losing investments to other states, and the government decided to step in and act,” Bakare added.

Land disputes and theft have long been a contentious issue in Lagos, and across Nigeria, according to land rights experts.

Dating back to the 1920s, most disputes within society and customary court cases have been about land, said a staff member at the National Archives of Nigeria, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not permitted to speak to the media.

In 1978, Nigeria passed the Land Use Act, which nationalised all land, and was intended to override customary land rights — where people have traditional rights but no legal recognition or protection of their land.

This aimed to make land more accessible, improve tenure security, and boost development.

But the act made allocating land discretionary, fuelling state corruption, and contributed to Nigeria’s large informal land market, academics and development experts say.

“Some Omo Onile believe the land was originally theirs and so act as if government ownership does not count,” said Matthew Ottah, a Lagos-based lawyer and also a victim of the Omo Onile.

While there are no estimates of the number of Omo Onile, their ranks are believed to be growing as Nigeria’s unemployment rate has reached a seven-year high — 12 percent — and Lagos state’s population continues to grow past 20 million people.

Across Lagos, the Omo Onile idle in their communities, often drinking and smoking, but always on the lookout for abandoned projects, land purchases and deals struck by construction firms.